CarolinaQue
is One Chatty Farker
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2007
- Location
- North Berwick, ME
So, I have been lucky enough to have a fairly local family supplier of Humphrey charcoal here in Maine. Never knew they were up this way until i met them at a contest back in May. I bought a bag of lump from them last month at the Old Orchard contest and was so impressed I wanted to buy 4 more bags. As my luck would have it, they were temporarily out due to the 4th of July demand. All they had were briquets, so I decided to buy 4 bags of those.
My main reasons for buying so much at once, is because I am testing out some charcoal baskets in my efforts to get more sleep when I cook at comps. Mot wanting to commit to a pellet cooker and thinking that I can get the job done with out a guru, I have steeped out on a quest.
I also tested some Kosmos Beef Injection that I purchased from the KC BBQ Store online after brethren was nice enough to send me a gift card for there:wink:
The end result was very good IMO. Normally, I have found that briquets can leave a sooty or dirty taste ont he meat when I've tried the minion method before with charcoal like K-blue bag and the such. Not at all with this stuff. A very pleasant smell to the smoke and a very clean and long burn. As I was doing a 4 lb chuck roast, I let the temps climb a little higher than I normally would to render the fat out a little better. I think that really fatty cuts like a chuck roast takes the higher heat really well.
I had a pretty steady burn at around 320* for about 3 hours, and thent he temp climbed to about 355* for about 30 minutes and then dropped back to 320* and held steady for several more hours. As a matter of fact, I didn't use quite half a basket and was at 275* at the grate 8 hours later.
I closed all of the vents down once the temp reached 280*, and didn't adjust a thing the rest of the day. I attribute the spike in temps to a section of wood chips that must have caught fire temporarily.
The end result was a very tasty chuck roast turned into pulled beef for fajitas.
This is how the cook went:
My main reasons for buying so much at once, is because I am testing out some charcoal baskets in my efforts to get more sleep when I cook at comps. Mot wanting to commit to a pellet cooker and thinking that I can get the job done with out a guru, I have steeped out on a quest.
I also tested some Kosmos Beef Injection that I purchased from the KC BBQ Store online after brethren was nice enough to send me a gift card for there:wink:
The end result was very good IMO. Normally, I have found that briquets can leave a sooty or dirty taste ont he meat when I've tried the minion method before with charcoal like K-blue bag and the such. Not at all with this stuff. A very pleasant smell to the smoke and a very clean and long burn. As I was doing a 4 lb chuck roast, I let the temps climb a little higher than I normally would to render the fat out a little better. I think that really fatty cuts like a chuck roast takes the higher heat really well.
I had a pretty steady burn at around 320* for about 3 hours, and thent he temp climbed to about 355* for about 30 minutes and then dropped back to 320* and held steady for several more hours. As a matter of fact, I didn't use quite half a basket and was at 275* at the grate 8 hours later.
I closed all of the vents down once the temp reached 280*, and didn't adjust a thing the rest of the day. I attribute the spike in temps to a section of wood chips that must have caught fire temporarily.
The end result was a very tasty chuck roast turned into pulled beef for fajitas.
This is how the cook went:
