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I seem to have lost my brisket rub recipe. I know the ingredients that I've been using for years but I honestly forgot the proportions. Here's what I remember: Morton's kosher salt 16-mesh coarse grind black pepper (S&P mixed 50-50 -- 4 Tbsp of each if memory serves). Celery salt (for added...

I've got a disaster in the making for my brisket cook tonight and I have zero clue what happened or what to do about it. I've had wild temp swings on this thing in the past but tonight it's completely out of control. I have a Flame Boss controller, I lit about a dozen coals and put them on top...

I had a slight accident doing a brisket yesterday that I didn't notice until today when it came time to clean up. I was using a foiled water pan (no water) on my 15 hour smoke and at some point the water pan came off its little ledge and brisket drippings fell onto the hot charcoal, through the...

I've always foodsavered left over ribs. I do 3 or 4 racks, we split one (just the wife and me) and save half-rack portions for winter suppers. Well, after the ribs were done our Food Saver machine conked out. I've got four 1/2-rack portions cooling down now, but how can I save them until our...

Hi all I'm not doing my First Brisket of the Season for Smoke Day, I rummaged in the freezer and found a Restaurant Depot double pack of 4-bone beef ribs from A While Ago. Since it's just going to be my wife and me this year, I'm in a bit of a quandry. Do I re-freeze the unused rack, or cook...

Hi all, I'm doing a hot-and-fast brisket today. 12 pounds trimmed Prime from Costco, dalmatian-plus rub. After watching a ton of YouTube videos I decided to give T-Roy's process a try using my 2008 18" WSM. His process is no water pan for two hours, 400°F pit temp and turning the grate a quarter...

Hi all, First cook of the season turned out to be a shoe-leather disaster. 13.1# Angus (pre-trim weight), trimmed down to 11 lb, 12 oz. Mustard slather, salt, Coarse and cracked black pepper, a dash of cayenne, ancho, celery seed and espresso-grind coffee—my usual brisket rub—applied about an...

When I use my Stoker temp control, which has a gentle 5 CFM fan over one of the vents, I notice that there's fine ash over the top of the food. I only use Comp. K for cooks long enough to require the Stoker (and regular blue-bag K for shorter cooks). How can I prevent this ash from forming?

So I had a nice 15 pound Angus packer that I put on at 230° last night, used a Stoker and pit temps stayed perfect. I'd expected it to be done sometime between 11 and noon. It's now 9am and the brisket is perfect. I need to keep it that way until service at 5pm. I'm kinda freaking out. Any...

I bought a gorgeous 14.65 pound CAB packer at Restaurant Depot for our weekend party. Severe weather forced me to get it on the smoker 2 hours after I planned and when it came time to leave, the thickest part of the flat was only about 185 or so. The point was magnificently jiggly but the bulk...

Hi all, I normally do butts overnight--on at 1am off about 3pm, hold and pull for supper, usually at 225-240. Tonight I'm just dog tired and would rather do it all when I'm fresh first thing in the morning. I've never done a butt with the pit above 250° so if I run it at 275° what should I be...

I started down the road to Amazing Barbecue about 8 years ago with the BRITU method. After Season 1 of BBQ Pitmasters I made it a point of trying to reverse-engineer Johnny Trigg's recipe and process and my ribs have been out of this world. Until now. A few weeks back, when it was still quite...

Hi all, About to do another packer Friday night on my 18" WSM. This one's about 15 pounds before trimming, with a long, skinny flat and not a lot of marbling. They didn't have any thick-flat packers when I went shopping, unfortunately. My nemesis in brisket has always been dry flats, especially...

Saw this on Pitmasters last night--in the wrap, they added what looked like about 2 cups of Coke (full-strength "Red Coke"). I've generally used beef broth at this stage of the cook and my results are pretty good, but I'd never thought of Coke. Any success stories with this? Or failures, for...

Hi all, So, last year we finally replaced our 30 year old deck with a gorgeous composite Trex deck. On my first smoke a briquette fell out of my starter chimney and briefly landed on the Trex melting the top slightly. It wasn't in a conspicuous place and some touch-up paint made it a little...

So I didn't think it was really possible to mess up a pork butt. I've done dozens of them in the past 6 years of smoking, all of them very tasty and fall-apart good. On Saturday I wanted to do one without doing the full 14+ hour overnight cook that I usually do for pulled pork. I started off...

Hi all, I'm just starting off a cook for a big party with about 40 pounds of meat and I'm experiencing a critical failure. I have an original-style Stoker and my fire probe and meat probe have somehow reversed themselves!!! The long, pointy meat probe, inserted in my the brisket is showing the...

Hi all, I'm hosting a cook for about 25 people this coming Saturday, for which a 14# packer brisket and two pork butts will be guests of honor. Planned dinner time had been about 4:30 to 5pm, but a good look at the forecast shows that very strong storms are expected from any time after 3 until...

Hi all, Well, another holiday weekend, another brisket that turned out less than what I'd expected. I will detail the cook in the following parargraphs, but the short version is that the meat passed the pull test, but there was just no real moisture. It was tasty, every scrap was inhaled by my...

Hi all, I've done three more packers recently and I just can't get them perfect, whether it's hot-and-fast or low-and-slow. I generally have the time and patience to do a low and slow, and with Comp K and a Stoker, I have the timing down well. Everything goes great until the stall. Once it...