Further Notes on Smoker

Alright, cooked my first batch of baby back ribs using the smoker today. They came out OK, but I think I can do better. More importantly, I learned a few more things about using the smoker.

1. Cooking when it’s cold and windy is difficult. Trying to dial in a specific temperature is very difficult to almost impossible because of all the variables: fuel, wind, outside temp.

2. I used the water bowl today for the first time and I’m not sure what it gained me other than a lot of steam. I’d read it helped to keep the temperature down, but that wasn’t entirely obvious to me. That might have more to do with the less than ideal barbecuing conditions though. It’s just too hard to tell at the moment.

3. I’ve read that the fuel door on the side of the unit has been made bigger. Well, I’d like it to be bigger yet. Also, adding water to the bowl seemed almost impossible from the door. I had to lift the lid and poor the water down through the grills- this seemed less than ideal.

4. The thermometer in the dome is nice, but would be a lot nicer if it was measuring the temps down at the grill level. Ideally, both grill levels. I don’t have any feel for how well the air is actually mixed in the grill- my assumption is the temps are higher at the grill level since they are so much closer to the heat source.

5. Even though conditions weren’t optimal today, dialing in a specific temperature is not easy. Do I close the bottom vents to slow the burn, or do I close the top vent? Does opening the top one just allow heat to leave or does it mainly provide for the draft? How long do I wait to see how the temp is affected by a change in the vents?

6. I got about 5 hours of heat on my initial load, and then an additional 3 hours after adding more briquettes. But, I wasn’t able to recover the heat level I wanted after refueling. Not sure what to do there.

7. BE CAREFUL MIXING THE COALS. It kicks up the ash and will likely end up on the food. Bleck.

The ribs were still good. They cooked for about 7 1/2 hours or so. Getting things started was easy and I only lifted the lid to add water, so the overall operation was much nicer. I still was monitoring the temperature pretty frequently, but that pails by comparison to what I had to do with the Weber kettle style grill.

As for the ribs, I applied a rub to them last night and left them in the fridge overnight. The rub consisted of brown sugar(1 cup), onion powder(1 tsp), garlic powder(1 tsp), paprika(1/2 tsp), cumin(1/2 tsp), chipotle pepper(1/4 tsp), cayenne pepper(1/8 tsp), orange peel(1/2 tsp). I also salted the ribs prior to applying the rub. I cut each rack in half and then placed the ribs in a vertical stacker on the top rack. When done cooking, they were pretty tender and the meat came off the bone with little effort.

That said, I’ve done better. The meat can be more tender, but that will require me to get a better gauge of the temps inside the smoker and also to get better control of the smoker temps as well. Overall, not a bad first attempt- both kids ate them without complaint if that’s any measure. I’ve got more racks in the freezer to learn with.