onerackrags
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I just recently joined the forum and wanted to share my casual yesterday/ Wednesday cook. One of my current jobs is in the Earth Fare (like a Whole Foods as far as quality focus, but smaller, less expensive, and more of a local vibe) meat and seafood department, and we had a sale running on grass fed Australian beef short ribs for $5.99/lb, plus 20% off as an employee. These rang in at a cool ~$21 :grin:.
I got them Tuesday, so Tuesday night before going to sleep, I prepped them up. The first picture is them untrimmed. The second is with the top silver skin, any big hard fat chunks, and the back membrane removed. The third is my standard dry-ish brine that I do on basically everything...lather some Crystal hot sauce then generous coverage of kosher salt. I'm a firm believer of an extended (24 hours/ overnight/ several hours depending on the thickness of the meat) salting/ dry brining. They then went wrapped into the fridge to sleep around 1030PM.
I got things moving around 8AM on Wednesday morning. I'm transitioning from having used Royal Oak lump for years to Royal Oak Chef's Select, so I filled up my charcoal basket with the remainder of my lump and some supplemental Chef's Select with some cherry and oak wood chunks dispersed throughout to add flavor throughout the cook. I like milder flavor, so I am quite partial to cherry. I also feel like it adds nice color. While I have mostly been happy with Royal Oak lump, I became increasingly frustrated with the inconsistency of the pieces ranging from pebbles to near logs and how that inconsistency impacts the stability of the burn and therefore temperature. I recently became familiar with Chef's Select through these forums and will likely be sticking with them. I've only used them a couple times but they seem to hold a stable temperature with less tinkering and are still 100% hardwood. They are a great deal through doitbest.com, ~$25 for a 40lb bag. I got the top layer of coals quickly running with my Harbor Freight propane torch (a must have in my opinion, makes lighting soooo much easier and faster and only $20). I let the drum warm up and stabilize for around 45 minutes while I had some breakfast and finished prep on the ribs, which for me is just a final touch of a heavy dose of black pepper. Beef is best in my opinion with simple seasoning and letting the meat shine through in all its glory. They went on at 9AM around 225*, at which point I added two wood chunks to the top of the coals. I cook most things in the 225-275* range and don't fuss too much as long as I stay in that range. The first picture is of my current drum, the third of its kind. I'm not overly handy, so I keep my builds super simple...three ~3/4" holes around the bottom for inflow with 1"x1" magnets to damper as needed then eight 1/2" holes in a circle on the lid for exhaust again with the same magnets to damper as needed. Plus, gotta have a fun bottle opener. I had this opener on the first barrel I built in 2013 and brought it along to this one that was built more recently in late 2018. It gets dubbed as the man-bear-pig of South Park fame, but also applicable because the barrel is used by man with a bear opener and often cooking some form of pig :grin:. The first and second pictures are of the barrel with some fresh pow-pow from Tuesday night on the ground. The third is of the meat after its peppering and the fourth of it on the barrel after about an hour with a water pan sitting directly below (two 22.5" standard Weber grates, then a pizza pan with holes drilled in it on top of the charcoal basket as a makeshift heat deflector).
It was a relatively stable cook requiring just a couple reshufflings of those finicky lump coals in the early goings. I prefer not to wrap in any way, foil or butcher's, unless I'm forced to due to time constraints, so I let them run from 9AM-6PM naked on the smoker, spraying generously with water occasionally when I needed to reshuffle the coals or when it had gone a couple hours without. From what I understand, wet meat attracts smoke as well as helps the bark from drying out too much. As for not wrapping, I'd rather sacrifice my time to a longer unwrapped cook than do anything that might hold the bark back from its peak. At 6PM, the weather took a turn with heavy rain dripping through the overhead porch onto the smoker, so I was forced to bring them indoors. At this point they were getting close, internal temp ~180* and starting to feel buttery. I double layer wrapped them in heavy duty foil (for some reason, I feel like unwrapped in the oven causes meat to dry out; not based on any evidence just my potentially unreasonable thought process) with the probe inserted then into a ~250* oven in an uncovered baking pan. They stayed in there until 7PM at which point they were probing just right, ~198* internal. I removed them and put them to bed in a cooler wrapped in two blankets/ towels. At this stage, I popped some mac n cheese into the oven to bake off. For those that are from or have visited the Atlanta area, the recipe is based off of Community Q's with my own minor spice twists. By the time the mac was ooey gooey ready to eat, it was 745PM, a shorter than I'd like rest period but adequate enough with the wife starting to get whiney for mealtime :mmph:. Let's just say it was a good dinner :grin:. Thanks for looking!
I got them Tuesday, so Tuesday night before going to sleep, I prepped them up. The first picture is them untrimmed. The second is with the top silver skin, any big hard fat chunks, and the back membrane removed. The third is my standard dry-ish brine that I do on basically everything...lather some Crystal hot sauce then generous coverage of kosher salt. I'm a firm believer of an extended (24 hours/ overnight/ several hours depending on the thickness of the meat) salting/ dry brining. They then went wrapped into the fridge to sleep around 1030PM.
I got things moving around 8AM on Wednesday morning. I'm transitioning from having used Royal Oak lump for years to Royal Oak Chef's Select, so I filled up my charcoal basket with the remainder of my lump and some supplemental Chef's Select with some cherry and oak wood chunks dispersed throughout to add flavor throughout the cook. I like milder flavor, so I am quite partial to cherry. I also feel like it adds nice color. While I have mostly been happy with Royal Oak lump, I became increasingly frustrated with the inconsistency of the pieces ranging from pebbles to near logs and how that inconsistency impacts the stability of the burn and therefore temperature. I recently became familiar with Chef's Select through these forums and will likely be sticking with them. I've only used them a couple times but they seem to hold a stable temperature with less tinkering and are still 100% hardwood. They are a great deal through doitbest.com, ~$25 for a 40lb bag. I got the top layer of coals quickly running with my Harbor Freight propane torch (a must have in my opinion, makes lighting soooo much easier and faster and only $20). I let the drum warm up and stabilize for around 45 minutes while I had some breakfast and finished prep on the ribs, which for me is just a final touch of a heavy dose of black pepper. Beef is best in my opinion with simple seasoning and letting the meat shine through in all its glory. They went on at 9AM around 225*, at which point I added two wood chunks to the top of the coals. I cook most things in the 225-275* range and don't fuss too much as long as I stay in that range. The first picture is of my current drum, the third of its kind. I'm not overly handy, so I keep my builds super simple...three ~3/4" holes around the bottom for inflow with 1"x1" magnets to damper as needed then eight 1/2" holes in a circle on the lid for exhaust again with the same magnets to damper as needed. Plus, gotta have a fun bottle opener. I had this opener on the first barrel I built in 2013 and brought it along to this one that was built more recently in late 2018. It gets dubbed as the man-bear-pig of South Park fame, but also applicable because the barrel is used by man with a bear opener and often cooking some form of pig :grin:. The first and second pictures are of the barrel with some fresh pow-pow from Tuesday night on the ground. The third is of the meat after its peppering and the fourth of it on the barrel after about an hour with a water pan sitting directly below (two 22.5" standard Weber grates, then a pizza pan with holes drilled in it on top of the charcoal basket as a makeshift heat deflector).
It was a relatively stable cook requiring just a couple reshufflings of those finicky lump coals in the early goings. I prefer not to wrap in any way, foil or butcher's, unless I'm forced to due to time constraints, so I let them run from 9AM-6PM naked on the smoker, spraying generously with water occasionally when I needed to reshuffle the coals or when it had gone a couple hours without. From what I understand, wet meat attracts smoke as well as helps the bark from drying out too much. As for not wrapping, I'd rather sacrifice my time to a longer unwrapped cook than do anything that might hold the bark back from its peak. At 6PM, the weather took a turn with heavy rain dripping through the overhead porch onto the smoker, so I was forced to bring them indoors. At this point they were getting close, internal temp ~180* and starting to feel buttery. I double layer wrapped them in heavy duty foil (for some reason, I feel like unwrapped in the oven causes meat to dry out; not based on any evidence just my potentially unreasonable thought process) with the probe inserted then into a ~250* oven in an uncovered baking pan. They stayed in there until 7PM at which point they were probing just right, ~198* internal. I removed them and put them to bed in a cooler wrapped in two blankets/ towels. At this stage, I popped some mac n cheese into the oven to bake off. For those that are from or have visited the Atlanta area, the recipe is based off of Community Q's with my own minor spice twists. By the time the mac was ooey gooey ready to eat, it was 745PM, a shorter than I'd like rest period but adequate enough with the wife starting to get whiney for mealtime :mmph:. Let's just say it was a good dinner :grin:. Thanks for looking!
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