Smoking with corn cob pellets was something I just learned about. Threads about it are easy to find and Pops has one with 20K views. I found a 40 lb bag early this week for $10 at Tractor Supply Company and yesterday was the big day. I used a mix of 1 part Knotty Wood Plum and 2 parts BestCob Premium Horse Bedding (yeah, you read that right). Many of you wrote about the nostalgic smell and taste of bacon and ham smoked with corn cobs. Even though I’m a former Minnesota farm kid I have no experience with that. So my experiment was going to be based on how it worked, smelled and tasted to me in this pulled ham cook.
I had a pork shoulder ham I took out of the brine and put in a ham sock as it had a lot of floppy parts thanks to a rushed butcher. I used the cob and hardwood mix in my Yoder pellet grill. I could immediately tell the corn cob pellets were producing much more smoke than I was used to seeing. There was never that subtle “line of thin blue smoke.“ The smoke smell was much stronger than using just hardwood pellets but not off-putting. Getting to the point, it was a 12-hour cook. I put the ham in a cooler overnight and pulled it early this morning while it was still very warm.
When I sampled it the smoke taste was much stronger like mesquite can be but without that pungent flavor. This morning when I went to clean the Yoder it was a mess. Ash was everywhere under the deflector plate. I decided I will not be putting a mix of hardwood and cob pellets into the pellet bin again. In the future, should I choose to use the cob pellets, I will put a mix in a smoke tube or turn it to cob dust and put it in my Amaze-N. As I mentioned before, because this cob smoke smell/flavor has no nostalgic hold on me I’ll have to figure out when I’ll use it. I have a huge bag left so I might give bags to some buddies.
I’ve read cob is good for cold smoking bacon and cheeses. That might be something I consider. But for me it will not be burned in my Yoder again unless it’s in a smoke tube. Certainly not in my auger-fed system again because of the mess and it really smoked up the neighborhood for 12 hours. I might owe a couple HOA neighbors some bacon lest they invent a new rule.
This is the 2:1 mix of Cob and Plum
The irony of putting this floppy shoulder in a sock only to turn it into pulled ham was not lost on me.
12 hours later and I had a very dark bark. I did not use a rub on account of the sock. Was the dark from the cob or the plum?
It fell apart on its own when I removed the ham sock. Perfectly cured using Pop’s brine. Works beautifully and flawlessly every time.
This is going to make some championship hash topped with a farm-fresh poached egg.
I had a pork shoulder ham I took out of the brine and put in a ham sock as it had a lot of floppy parts thanks to a rushed butcher. I used the cob and hardwood mix in my Yoder pellet grill. I could immediately tell the corn cob pellets were producing much more smoke than I was used to seeing. There was never that subtle “line of thin blue smoke.“ The smoke smell was much stronger than using just hardwood pellets but not off-putting. Getting to the point, it was a 12-hour cook. I put the ham in a cooler overnight and pulled it early this morning while it was still very warm.
When I sampled it the smoke taste was much stronger like mesquite can be but without that pungent flavor. This morning when I went to clean the Yoder it was a mess. Ash was everywhere under the deflector plate. I decided I will not be putting a mix of hardwood and cob pellets into the pellet bin again. In the future, should I choose to use the cob pellets, I will put a mix in a smoke tube or turn it to cob dust and put it in my Amaze-N. As I mentioned before, because this cob smoke smell/flavor has no nostalgic hold on me I’ll have to figure out when I’ll use it. I have a huge bag left so I might give bags to some buddies.
I’ve read cob is good for cold smoking bacon and cheeses. That might be something I consider. But for me it will not be burned in my Yoder again unless it’s in a smoke tube. Certainly not in my auger-fed system again because of the mess and it really smoked up the neighborhood for 12 hours. I might owe a couple HOA neighbors some bacon lest they invent a new rule.
This is the 2:1 mix of Cob and Plum
The irony of putting this floppy shoulder in a sock only to turn it into pulled ham was not lost on me.
12 hours later and I had a very dark bark. I did not use a rub on account of the sock. Was the dark from the cob or the plum?
It fell apart on its own when I removed the ham sock. Perfectly cured using Pop’s brine. Works beautifully and flawlessly every time.
This is going to make some championship hash topped with a farm-fresh poached egg.
