Took a chance yesterday

[novadoc]

Well,
For my first time ever smoking meat, I decided to throw a Bbq for 30+ people.

I have been reading this forum for a while and have had success smoking jerky and fish. I have never done Bbq as my home made smoker was unable to reach the required temps to cook (was originally made just for smoking jerky)

I decided to convert my hot plate heated jerky maker into a propane powered wooden smoke house. If you want to know more about it, check my thread in the Smokehouse build section.

I got everything assembled on Thursday, checked to make sure I could reach the desired temperature and began preparing for Saturday morning.

We picked up 6 full racks of baby back ribs, 1 rack of beef ribs cut into 2 pieces (then got the butcher to cut them in half lengthwise so it was 4 narrower racks) a 9lb pork shoulder (for PP) and 5 jumbo turkey drums. I also picked up everything to make 50 ABT's

I whipped up a rib rub and pork rub on Friday and gave all the meat a healthy dose of spices(minus the turkey), my ABT helper(wife) fell asleep on me so I stayed up till 2am putting them together.
2:15 off to bed, alarm set for 5 am (I figured it would be better to start early in case I run into any problems)

Here is all the meat ready to go into the fridge.

5:00am I took the 10 racks of ribs and shoulder out of the fridge so they can come up to room temp, fired up the burners and got the smoke generator going.

Meat was on at 6:10am

Watched "The Raid:Redemption" while keeping an eye on the smoker
Ribs off sauced and foiled at 9:15

Shoulder reached 160 at 10am foiled than back in the smoker
Ribs out again 11:30 removed from foil and back into the heat for 1 more hour

Ribs came off at 12:00 and placed them in a big dish covered in foil(ready to be warmed when guests arrive)
Shoulder reached 205@ 1:00pm wrapped in towel and placed in cooler.

Turkey drums went in immediately and ABTs went in at 3pm

Drums hit 175@ 5:30
Bacon on ABTs was crispy and delicious at this point as well.

Dinner served at 5:30 pm (corn chicken and burgers done on my big gas grill)

Leftovers are 2 turkey drums, enough pork for maybe 2 sammies, one cupcake one brownie and a whole lot of empties
:D:beer:

I apologize for the long winded post but I just wanted to say thanks to this site and all its members. I could not have done it without all the knowledge offered on this site.

And last but not least, here is some QView:beer:

 

[wjordan52]

That looks like a killer feast! Congrats on smoking so much food successfully... I haven't tried anything quite that ambitious yet. I imagine your guests were in heaven. Haven't tried turkey legs yet, but they're next on my 'new stuff' list. And by the way, that's a great looking smoke house.

 

[novadoc]

I read a bunch of posts on curing the legs in a brine before you smoke them but honestly I didn't have that much time, it also makes them taste like ham :what:

All I did was hit them with the same rub I used on my ribs and jacked the temp to 270
They hit 175 in just over 4 hours, had crispy skin and a beautiful smoke ring.:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::D

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