dt
MemberGot rid of the matchlight.
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2017
- Location
- Burnsville, NC
I posted this in the Cattle Call but figured I would do it here too. We are headed into the city and at this point I am wondering if we need to just go and buy a different kind of smoker today! Is there hope for me and the Oklahoma Joe COS?
"Good morning. I just joined yesterday for my husband who doesn't do a lot of internet posting. He bought an Oklahoma Joe for himself last week and we were reading for information. Sounds like we should have read for information long before buying the thing!!
Quick bio and then the horror story. We are both 57. Parents of 4 grown kids. He is a plumber and I am the director at the local animal shelter. We have a lab and a german shepherd. Enough of that.
So we thought we were all ready. DT has been doing the worlds best ribs for years using the oven/grill to glaze method. I have done butts in the oven and crock pot. So we bought four racks of ribs and 2 butts. Used charcoal and small chunks of oak. The temp gauges on top of the cooking side were reading really good and high (right one was up to 400 a few times) but we had an oven thermometer down on the cooking grate and it never got to 200. Highest I saw was 194 (when the top gauge was reading 400). Smoke was escaping all around the lid, btw. We put a big pan of beans under the cooking grate to catch the drippings also.
After about 8 hours we pulled the ribs and tried (key word here) to eat them. They were delicious in taste, but tough and dry. Bottom was black (creosote?) They were not good. We left the butts on there because I could barely get any meat to flake off. Finally at 1:00 this morning we pulled them off (too old to stay up much later...), wrapped them in foil and put them in our good marine cooler. This morning we checked the temp to see if it would be safe to continue to cook them in the oven instead of wasting them and the internal temp was not even 100. Thrown away
Also, I went to get pot holders to remove the pan of beans that were sitting on the fire bricks in the bottom of the cooking chamber and didn't even need them. The beans were barely warm and I could life the pan out with my hands. Now granted, there had been no wood addded to the fire for an hour or so at that time.
So, bottom line...we stink at smoking and need an intervention. What in the world did we do so very wrong? LOL."
"Good morning. I just joined yesterday for my husband who doesn't do a lot of internet posting. He bought an Oklahoma Joe for himself last week and we were reading for information. Sounds like we should have read for information long before buying the thing!!
Quick bio and then the horror story. We are both 57. Parents of 4 grown kids. He is a plumber and I am the director at the local animal shelter. We have a lab and a german shepherd. Enough of that.
So we thought we were all ready. DT has been doing the worlds best ribs for years using the oven/grill to glaze method. I have done butts in the oven and crock pot. So we bought four racks of ribs and 2 butts. Used charcoal and small chunks of oak. The temp gauges on top of the cooking side were reading really good and high (right one was up to 400 a few times) but we had an oven thermometer down on the cooking grate and it never got to 200. Highest I saw was 194 (when the top gauge was reading 400). Smoke was escaping all around the lid, btw. We put a big pan of beans under the cooking grate to catch the drippings also.
After about 8 hours we pulled the ribs and tried (key word here) to eat them. They were delicious in taste, but tough and dry. Bottom was black (creosote?) They were not good. We left the butts on there because I could barely get any meat to flake off. Finally at 1:00 this morning we pulled them off (too old to stay up much later...), wrapped them in foil and put them in our good marine cooler. This morning we checked the temp to see if it would be safe to continue to cook them in the oven instead of wasting them and the internal temp was not even 100. Thrown away
Also, I went to get pot holders to remove the pan of beans that were sitting on the fire bricks in the bottom of the cooking chamber and didn't even need them. The beans were barely warm and I could life the pan out with my hands. Now granted, there had been no wood addded to the fire for an hour or so at that time.
So, bottom line...we stink at smoking and need an intervention. What in the world did we do so very wrong? LOL."