Pork burnt ends

[Kevin DeShazo]

This is more about the wood I used for some pork belly burnt ends than the actual burnt ends themselves. This wont be a long post and will only have one pict, but the results, i think, came out pretty good.

As posted in another thread, I bought some coffee wood chips and Ive had a hankering for some pork belly burnt ends, luckily I found some pork belly this morn at the store.

Cubed and seasoned the pb with some Meat Church Texas Sweet and tossed the pb into the MES40 with the coffee wood at 225, typical cook, 2.5 hrs smoking, another 2 hrs covered with foil and tossed with butter, brown sugar and some homemade sauce. Finally a .5 hrs foil off and lil more coffee wood.

PB came out great, now the coffee wood is what Im here really to talk about. It has an nutty, almost earthy scent producing a nice tbs with a hint of brown to it. Those same scents are there, fairly light with some light roast coffee flavor mixed in for good measure.

Those flavors played quite well with the sweet/spicy zing of the rub and tang of the sauce.

 

[SmokingUPnorth]

Looks good. Any comparisons to the everyday wood like apple/oak/easy to get woods?

 

[Kevin DeShazo]

Looks good. Any comparisons to the everyday wood like apple/oak/easy to get woods?

They do come in pellet form also

Tropical Spark - Wood Pellets, Aromatic Smoker Pellets, Wood Pellets for Smoker, Assorted Costa Rican BBQ Pellets, Grill Pellets for Smoking, Grilling, Baking, Roasting, & Braising, 6 Pack https://a.co/d/2qAyjzw

 

[Kevin DeShazo]

Since I generally use Western brand chips, I will use those as my comparison between the two. I have used other brands, but Western is easily available around me, seems everywhere I go.

I will start off with size, Western chips are pretty uniform in size and shape, looks like the wood was run though a chipper, the Tropical Spark (TS) chips are much bigger and look more like just broken pieces of wood vs being run through a chipper. The Western are also smaller in size compared to the TS. There was a couple times when I loaded the smoker, I could only get 4-5 pieces in at a time due to size. Now that may not nec an issue since they are bigger, the seem to last longer. If you look at the thread I made about the actual wood, you will see the size of them.

Availability, I can get Western just about anyplace that sells grills and accessories, Cabelas, Academy, Walmart. I usually get them from Walmart as they are between $3-4 a bag depending on flavor. The TS is only available on Amazon, I can get them next day depending on when I order them, so availability at this moment is easy. Where the issue with Amazon, is item is here today, gone tomorrow. The TS does come in apple and oak I believe but they also carry guava and orange, which I got a bag of orange wood also, have a hard time finding orange chips.

That leads to the next piece, along with availability, comes price, as stated above I get the Western chips at Walmart, any other place its at least $6 a bag for the Western. The TS were $11 and some change per bag, which is kinda high but for something I will call a specialty, its not that bad. Also the TS store on Amazon sells 4 two lb bags for $35 which makes each bag about $8 a pc and when compared to most places the Western being $6, isnt that much of a difference.

I can not say, yet what the ash looks like and how complete a "burn" they had, but the time the smoker cooled off to put the cover back on, it was raining pretty good and I wasnt about to get soaked to dump the ash in the cold, dark and rainy nite. Future me (this afternoon) will handle this piece. Generally if the Western has given all they got, its usually just ash and no pieces left.

These are the big things I can think of at this moment for a comparison, hope that helps.

 

[smokerjim]

Looks good

 

[tx smoker]

The PBBE look great but you have me intrigued with the coffee wood. I am going to check and see if they have chunks of coffee wood as opposed to chips. "The description you gave sounds fantastic. Thanks for the info.

Robert

 

[gmc2003]

Nice looking PBBEs Kevin and a good write up on the wood.

Point for sure
Chris

 

[JLeonard]

I'm with Robert.......Gonna have to google for some chunks.

Jim