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Big Green Egghead
01-10-2008, 05:59 AM
Hey everyone, I am new "poster" here but frequent reader and I now have a new Traeger 'Lil Tex. I bought it for our ribs in competitions. So my questions for ya'll' wise BBQ'ers are:

1. What is the average hour per pound estimate at 225-250?

2. What can I do to prevent, or what are the warning signs that the pellets are burning back up the auger?

3. What else should I prepare myself for? Any tips or suggests are of course welcome!

Hope all is well...keep on Q'ing..I'll check back after work

Ryan

Plowboy
01-10-2008, 07:51 AM
Hey everyone, I am new "poster" here but frequent reader and I now have a new Traeger 'Lil Tex. I bought it for our ribs in competitions. So my questions for ya'll' wise BBQ'ers are:

1. What is the average hour per pound estimate at 225-250?

2. What can I do to prevent, or what are the warning signs that the pellets are burning back up the auger?

3. What else should I prepare myself for? Any tips or suggests are of course welcome!

Hope all is well...keep on Q'ing..I'll check back after work

Ryan


I've used the same grill for comp ribs. I'll assume you have an LED controller with 180 and 245 settings. You are going to get your best amount of smoke at the 180 setting. With pellets, the hotter you burn, the more efficient the fire is going to be, thus you don't get as much smoke.

Need to know what kind of ribs you are talking about: baby backs or st. louis spares.

Try running at 180 setting for 3 hours bone side down, meat side up. Then wrap (add a couple tablespoons of apple juice) and place back on grill meat side down/bone side up. Adjust controller to 245 setting. Run for 90 minutes and do a feel check. If the bone is starting to pull away to your liking, pull them. Open the foil back, flip your ribs over, and sauce (you probably want to sauce the back sides first). Place back on the grill sitting on top of your rolled back foil for 15 minutes. Re-sauce, and replace for another 15 minutes. Depending on doneness of the ribs, you may want to turn your controller back to 180 or even smoke. Either will be anough heat to set your sauce.

Times will vary depending on size and cut of meat. Do some practice runs to find your desired process, temps and times. What I've described is not the only way to do ribs, but its one way.

With the Traeger grills, your grate level can be pretty warm. For competition, I'd recommend getting the double decker, stainless rib rack that Traeger makes for the 075. Raising the product up one or two levels makes a big difference. The top rack will get done faster, so you'll want to watch that. Either adjust your times for that rack on top or rotate as needed.

Best of luck with the new grill.

kcpellethead
01-10-2008, 07:57 AM
Ryan,

Congrats on your new addition. Pellet cookers are our friends . . .LOL

1. This is a very tricky question. Depending on where your thermometer reads the temp in your pit, 225 - 250 may be completely different than my 225 - 250. I read my temp at grate level. Regardless of whether ribs are back ribs or spare ribs and if I didn't plan to foil the ribs at any time during the process, I would say it's going to take about 5 - 6 hours to cook a 2.5 pound slab of ribs.

2. I have only had the fire burn back up my auger tube once and it required a series of events to occur. One, the pit was being used to cook hot, like 375. So, there was a big fire in the fire pot. Two, the wind was blowing at about 10 - 15 mph. It was a cross wind. Finally, instead of ramping down the temperature, we just shut the pit off. That combination caused the fire to burn up the auger tube and into the hopper. If you're going to cook hot on your new Traeger, roll the temp back at the end of the cook so that when you shut it down there isn't a big fire burning in the fire pot.

3. While I have never had a true jamb with my three pits, be careful about keeping the pellets and the hopper dry. Moisture is the enemy of pellets. Also, every once in awhile, you should hand sweep or vacuum the fire pot. Most of the time the ash blows out from the combustion fan, but sometimes there is an ash build up.

Good luck. Make sure someone shows you the secret handshake.

Rod

Big Green Egghead
01-10-2008, 11:35 AM
Cool. Well thanks guys. It sounds like it's really not too different then what we have done in the past in regards to our times and temps. I am really excited about cooking on it. I am off to Chicago and then Wisconsin this weekend, but I plan on cooking up a lot of pig soon. I will post some pics. I the mean time, I have to think about what I'm going to do with all the extra time now that I don't have to watch the smoker, and how to convience my wife that it was a good idea to get another grill.


Oh I did get the LCD control- just haven't installed yet.

Ryan

Plowboy
01-10-2008, 01:24 PM
Cool. Well thanks guys. It sounds like it's really not too different then what we have done in the past in regards to our times and temps. I am really excited about cooking on it. I am off to Chicago and then Wisconsin this weekend, but I plan on cooking up a lot of pig soon. I will post some pics. I the mean time, I have to think about what I'm going to do with all the extra time now that I don't have to watch the smoker, and how to convience my wife that it was a good idea to get another grill.


Oh I did get the LCD control- just haven't installed yet.

Ryan

There are two recent LED controllers. One has a 245 setting and other has 225. Most people prefer the 225 since there isn't so much of a jump from 180 to the next step up. But most of us have the 245 and it works fine. There's nothing really wrong with the 245 controller.

Dale P
01-10-2008, 01:57 PM
Nice, Hows about a pic of that new toy.

Wizards of 'Que
01-10-2008, 02:05 PM
If you are worried about burn back, another shutdown method is to turn off the cooker and wait several minutes for the pellets in the pot to burn down. Then turn the cooker back on for 30 secs or so to run any pellets which might be smoldering in the auger tube into the fire pot.

The_Kapn
01-10-2008, 02:10 PM
I really do not know about the system on that grill.

But, I am anal about cleaning the pelets and ash out of my FEC.
A simple suck with a cheap Shop Vac from the bottom and the top of the auger and of the firepot works wondetful and is so easy.

Just keep it clean to start with and you will be fine,

TIM