Beginner question re: cooking times

It's going to be hard to get any kind of meaningful response to your question without more facts. Additionally, when you are smoking, you really ought to be cooking to temperature, not the clock, and the times will vary with pit type and size, fuel, weather meat preparation, and procedure.

What kind of pit are you using? Fuel? How are ribs or chicken prepped? What temp will you be smoking at?

Zedsdead said:

What is the reccommend cooking time for spare ribs and chicken breasts on a wood burning grill?

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Wow, that's a tough question to answer. There are so many variables.

Hot coals...
Medium hot coals...

Direct...
Indirect...

Can you give us a little more information how how you are cooking these things. I'm sure we can come up with something to help.

mgwerks said:

It's going to be hard to get any kind of meaningful response to your question without more facts. Additionally, when you are smoking, you really ought to be cooking to temperature, not the clock, and the times will vary with pit type and size, fuel, weather meat preparation, and procedure.

What kind of pit are you using? Fuel? How are ribs or chicken prepped? What temp will you be smoking at?

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All of what he said is important.:becky:

Zedsdead said:

It seems like alot of ppl cook meats for 3.5+ hours. I am looking to cook mainly steak, chicken breast, ribs, chicken thighs and brisket and I want to learn to cook competition type quality (have alrdy enrolled in barbecue classes with competition teams which start next month), but I work full time and want to get my barbecuing done quickly for dinner after work. Is there a way I can cut cooking times down usig higher temperatures or different grills so I can cook the foods I listed in a short amount of time without sacrificing quality too much?

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What time frame are you looking for?

Boy, two hours or less is tough, try eggs (ug) or ABT's

You really need to think realistically BBQ is low and SLOW!!

Zedsdead said:

It seems like alot of ppl cook meats for 3.5+ hours. I am looking to cook mainly steak, chicken breast, ribs, chicken thighs and brisket and I want to learn to cook competition type quality (have alrdy enrolled in barbecue classes with competition teams which start next month), but I work full time and want to get my barbecuing done quickly for dinner after work. Is there a way I can cut cooking times down usig higher temperatures or different grills so I can cook the foods I listed in a short amount of time without sacrificing quality too much?

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This is really all semantics, but I consider grilling to be cooking on an outdoor cooker at a high, usually, direct heat. For the most part, I grill steaks and chicken breasts. These are fast cooks, usually done in less than an hour.

I consider smoking to be cooking on an outdoor cooker at a low indirect heat. I smoke ribs, brisket, pork shoulders, and chicken. This tends to be a slow cook and is usually referred to as cooking low'n'slow. When I refer to BBQ, I refer to smoked meats. Other people consider BBQ anything grilled or smoked. BBQ competitions (and most of the guys on this forum) will tend to have the same point of view about BBQ that I do.

You may or may not have read about hot'n'fast BBQ but that's still no where near as fast as grilling. It's just fast relative to cooking low'n'slow. (IE instead of cooking a brisket at 225F for 12 hours you cook it at 300F for 7 hours).

If you have 2 hours and a hot smoker then i think you can smoke sausages, burgers, fatties, abts, chicken pieces, fish,vegs.
Did you tell us what you are cooking on?
That will make a difference in time needed to get the smoker ready.
jon

Yeah, 2 hours or less, you are definitely looking more towards "grilling" than "barbequeing". But, you can still get some good smoke flavor while grilling.

Steaks and chicken: I like to set my griller with fire on one side only. I have a custom grill that only covers half of the "griller". I move it to the non-fire side, and smoke the mewat for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes, then I move the grill to the fire side, and cook until done. For steaks ands chicken, this entire process runs roughly 2 to 2 1/2 hours, depnding on how long it takes to get the coals going.

Here's the grill(er) I work with..

By your opening thread, I take it you haven't done much in the way of cooking. All the advice above is excellent, and this is really a fun hobby to try to master. Before you sink a bunch of cash into smokers/eggs/etc., why don't you try out a decent gas grill? You get rapid heat, excellent temperature control, and you can add smoke flavor very easily, and lots of versatility.

Better yet, you can learn to cook and have some tasty success while youre at it!

Good luck!

I started out with gas grills, but I prefer my Egg, now. I think a Big Green Egg will do everything you are looking for. They are very versatile. They can get up to 700F-800F for steakhouse-like steaks or you can go 20 hours at 225F on a single load of lump for your brisket cooks.

As an alternative, you could also look at a Weber Kettle. They are great grills for a fraction of the price of the BGE. You can also setup indirect cooks on the kettle for ribs and brisket, but the Kettle won't be near as efficient as the BGE.