"Trigg Finish" attempt results in black tar... where did I go wrong?

I wanted to try something a bit different this weekend, so I went a little "hot and fast" with 2 racks of spares. 275 for 2 1/2 hours, then went for the "Trigg finish" of butter, brown sugar, honey, and a little heat (I used a few drops of straight tabasco for mine, as I don't have the infamous "Tiger sauce".) Back into the OTS for one hour.

When I unwrapped, I didn't have golden brown - I had black, tarry, gooey goo that, while not too bad tasting, certainly wasn't what I was expecting.

Where did I go wrong?

Two factors that might have played into it:

1) I only used about 2 TBSP of butter per side, or about half a sti ck per rack. Might not have been enough fat to keep the sugar from burning?

2) I did get a temp spike right after returning to the grill up to about 300 for about 5 minutes - could this have caused the sugar to flash-burn to the foil before the butter had a chance to down?

The meat finished tender, and after I was able to rid most of the mess and sauce-finish to a very, very dark amber with some traditional grocery-store sauce, the result was a good-but-no-where-near-great product, so I'd love to try and figure this one out so I don't have a repeat on next week's racks.

Any thoughts?

(Edit: Equipment was an OTS, kingsford blue with hickory and mesquite chips, set up for indirect heat "minion style" using a foiled brick for a heat shield, controlling temps with the one-touch vent and offseting the wide-open lid vent from the heat source for coverage.

Thanks, I thought about that afterwards. When it happened, after the initial shock, I went into a flurry of tasting, then picking and scraping the ugliness before using an apple juice "rinse" before resaucing to try and save dinner - otherwise they were gettin' hockey-puck burgers and hot dogs!

Thanks Oak Pit - I was curious about this when I first read the method, because sugar will usually start to burn if you get too much above 260 or so, but my understanding is the fat of the butter will prevent this once it gets into solution. That's why I figured either there wasn't enough butter to keep it from burning, or that the quick temp spike may have burned the sugar before the butter had a chance to melt, as I used stick (that was pretty cold and firm) instead of soft tub- or squirt-.

My temp readings are far from dead-on, as I was using a couple of those grocery store oven thermometers, but I have oven-tested them within 5 degrees. I also try and get around any mechanical glitches by placing two of them together, so that if they read the same, it's usually a pretty good indication that they're fairly accurate.

That makes sense - I never really considered that the butter may have burned, but I have had a similar issue with wrapping corn and adding butter instead of margarine, where it will burn up a bit. And I guess burned butter + honey would certainly produce the tarry finish I had.

Looks like I've got some experimenting to do, thanks a bunch to you folks for the input!

Sounds like your product got too hot and scorched the sugars. Doesn't take long approaching 300 for this to happen. He does not use butter in his method.

Oven thermometers read slow, so if you saw it topped at 300, it's peak was probably higher than that.

Big Mike

If you clarify the butter, which removes the butter fat and leaves a golden liquid, you may have been okay. It increases the smoke point of butter, which is give or take 250, to 350 degrees. I would definately agree it was probably the whole butter that burnt up on ya....nice kick save though.

Thanks guys - appreciate all of the feedback. I'll give it another go this weekend in the oven to set the time and temp I need before moving back to the kettle.