I like my butts black and juicy
- Thread starter Trainer
- Start date
Trainer
Rookie
Can you get that crispy outer part without a flame?
Supernatural_Serve
Professional
with a healthy serving of stretch marks, pock marks, and zits
Hellz no! You need to get yourself a proper smoker (or a well-set up grill) and work that butt for a good 3-4 hours.
If you just liked smoked pork, you could get something called a "savu smoker bag", which you can put a decent sized butt and heat on any surface. Oven, electric grill, whatever. But, as it is in a bag, there's too much steam for a quality crust to develop.
LafayetteHitter
Hall of Fame
The vegetarians will love that pic. I'm sure a few will put it as their wallpaper? lol
Gloppy tomato-based sauce for ribs, vinegar/mustard sauce for other parts of pork. Nada for beef.
Most people (myself included) associate ribs with the KC-style. It should be a little syrupy, sweet, and full-on messy. There should be some heat in the back of the mouth but it shouldn't be anything sour. Carolinans beg to differ, but the rest of the country eats ribs with an extra helping of sugar.
But if you're having pulled pork, it's got to be vinegar or mustard sauce. First, properly done pulled pork is even more unctuous than ribs, and so you don't need to add another layer to that. Second, it's usually eaten in a sandwhich, and it tastes much cleaner with hot sauce. If you eat sliceable, as a pork roast, it's great if you have a mustardy sauce to go with it.
That said, if you've screwed up on pulled pork, having a thick tomato sauce can cover up your mistakes. It won't be great (cos the pairing is wrong), but it would be dried pork either.
Beef ribs is a bit too, erm, juicy dry, but it doesn't really go that well with a vinegar sauce. This one you can be creative, and play with using Asian flavors (i.e. Korean BBQ) or straight up glop.
Brisket should be eaten dry. But I've never really had great smoked brisket. And I failed when I tried do it myself (not easy to get the point cut here.)
Dry rub no sauce.
Yes, low and slow indirect heat at about 225-250 for 10-12 hours.
Cooking a brisket tommorow starting it about 7:30-8:00 in the morning.
malakas
Banned
[
Top pic is my father-in-law, bottom pic is me at BBQ cook-off.
Woah those are two different people? You guys look exactly the same, same clothes and everything. That's a crazy resemblance.
Haha, that's exactly what I was thinking.
I'm still new to smoking meats. If I ever got to competition level, you would do everything by scratch.
I use a WSM so the heat source is charcoal. For smoking the meat, I usually use hickory or oak chunks (if oak, A LOT of oak chunks), and then some apple or cherry wood. You don't want to use mesquite for smoking because the flavor is way too strong.
I make my own rub, though it's just the usual salt + sugar + spice rack, and usually let it stay on overnight. The salt in the rub helps some of the flavor penetrate into the meat. I've tried slathering mustard on in order to get the rub to stick to the meat. Works good with pork butt at least. If you don't like mustard flavor, you won't pick it up anyway.
I usually doctor some commercial sauce. Mostly because I'm lazy.
I've done orange BBQ sauce and apple butter sauce before, though. I usually baste with apple juice or 7-up.
The most important thing really is the wood and the actual smoking. Sauce does not make good BBQ. Monitor temperature correctly (I attached a thermometer to the WSM) so that it stays in the 200-225 or 220-250 range for a very long time.
Pork butt is really, really easy; it's very forgiving. With ribs, you got to some extra work. Ripping off the membrane and if you're doing spares, some extra butchering for a proper st. louis cut. I might smoke a turkey this year. Brisket is difficult because it take a good 8+ hours (really 10+ hours) to get the brisket ready, and you still may get a dry piece of meat before it's tender.
I use a WSM so the heat source is charcoal. For smoking the meat, I usually use hickory or oak chunks (if oak, A LOT of oak chunks), and then some apple or cherry wood. You don't want to use mesquite for smoking because the flavor is way too strong.
I make my own rub, though it's just the usual salt + sugar + spice rack, and usually let it stay on overnight. The salt in the rub helps some of the flavor penetrate into the meat. I've tried slathering mustard on in order to get the rub to stick to the meat. Works good with pork butt at least. If you don't like mustard flavor, you won't pick it up anyway.
I usually doctor some commercial sauce. Mostly because I'm lazy.
I've done orange BBQ sauce and apple butter sauce before, though. I usually baste with apple juice or 7-up. The most important thing really is the wood and the actual smoking. Sauce does not make good BBQ. Monitor temperature correctly (I attached a thermometer to the WSM) so that it stays in the 200-225 or 220-250 range for a very long time.
Pork butt is really, really easy; it's very forgiving. With ribs, you got to some extra work. Ripping off the membrane and if you're doing spares, some extra butchering for a proper st. louis cut. I might smoke a turkey this year. Brisket is difficult because it take a good 8+ hours (really 10+ hours) to get the brisket ready, and you still may get a dry piece of meat before it's tender.
I was just curious, I use a Char-Griller Pro w/ sfb & a smoke stack mod. I make my own rub and sauce and use a combination of hickory, oak, & pecan. You really should try the competition thing though it is a blast I have done one the last two years with my father-in-law. You enter the backyard division and it is ribs and chicken only. There will some guys with proffesional rigs but for the most part it is guys like us that just love to cook.
Serve em Up
Rookie
All right all of you Bar B Que experts.
How do you keep the meat from drying our. When ever I try ribs, I put in a tray of water with the meat and cook them but they alwys dry out. I likem juicy.
How do you keep the meat from drying our. When ever I try ribs, I put in a tray of water with the meat and cook them but they alwys dry out. I likem juicy.
Fedace
Banned
If not cooked properly, pork butt can give you food poisoing and send you to a hospital.
If not cooked properly, pork butt can give you food poisoing and send you to a hospital.
If not properly cooked any food can give you food poisoning and send you to the hospital
What temp are you cooking them at and are you cooking them direct or indirect. Oh yeah how long are you cooking them? I usually let the rib tell me when they are done by twisting a bone and when it starts to break free they are close to being done.
And even then the pork butt is mighty delicious.
Yeah, I mean, smoking means taking meat past the well-done state to that special melt-in-your-mouth fall apart state. If you got food poisoning from BBQ, then no cooking method could have prevented that.
My hunch is that you're probably doing them at 325-350 or so, i.e. "grill-steaming" them a la Tony Roma. Mmmm steamed ribs . . .
Ideally, you want to lower the heat to about 225-250 and go low and slow until the meat kinda shrinks from the bone. That's about 3-4 hours for baby backs. I usually pull the bone on the end to test for doneness. You got to get the collagen to melt, so that it has the ribs are unctious. However, your setup may not be good at mantaining such a low heat.
If you want to grill baby backs, you can use a 275-300 degrees heat and go for about 2-3 hours. In this case, brining ribs (which you wouldn't do with smoking ribs) for about an hour prior will protect the meat from the higher heat. Dry ribs after brine, apply mustard, and then rub. The mustard will enhance the bark you're looking for.
iradical18
Professional
Why don't you eat port Rickson?
Rickson
G.O.A.T.
I am a mu... it gives me a stomach ache. I'm a Christian.
iplaybetter
Hall of Fame
if you have the right coating it will caramelize and turn black and good
That made me laugh thank you.
Rickson
G.O.A.T.
You're welcome and I actually do miss the taste. Damn bowels!
iradical18
Professional
That's a bummer. I'm the same way with a few things since I had my gallbladder removed.
Rickson
G.O.A.T.
No spices for you, my friend. Do you still eat pork?
iradical18
Professional
Yea I still eat pork but not that often.
Rickson
G.O.A.T.
I haven't eaten pork since 2004. Too many bathroom runs. I never gave up hot sauce.
