Christmas Smoke on the OTG


 
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

Brandon (Carlisle PA)

New member
Someone will have to help me out w/getting my "evidence" uploaded into this topic... I wanted to take advantage of my whole day off w/out having to run anywhere, and the nice Christmas Day weather we were going to have here in Central PA. I picked up a 10lb bone in pork shoulder and 2 racks of baby backs on Thursday
icon_smile.gif
I have done a 6lb bone in before, and have done spareribs 3x... but this was going to be a bigger task for me. I started out by foiling 3/4 of the charcoal grate to keep tight control of airflow to my coals, then put the shoulder in a deep foil roasting pan w/the rub on it right down on bottom grate. Stacked the 1/2 chimney of leftover coals and about 1/2 chimney of new charcoal on the other side w/some hickory chips buried in... lit 12 coals and put the lid on about 9am (not early enough!) I tried hard to maintain 275 at the lid vent.... was difficult w/2 little ones on Christmas morning and on a breezy day. I did manage to keep the temp ranging from 250 to 325 90% of the time. I had a spike of about 400 just after topping off w/fresh coals and loading ribs onto top rack around noon, but got it back under 300 w/in 15mins (thank the grill gods for tight weber seal
icon_wink.gif
) Did the ribs 2hrs dry then foiled for 3hrs and they were falling off the bone! These were the best ribs i have ever tasted (not that I am BBQ judge or anything, but i have tried a dozen or so others) and the other 4 ppl eating them said the same! When i pulled the ribs off the grill at 5 I moved the shoulder up to top rack and was getting temp of 150 even though it had already been foiled for an hour.... Finally removed from the grill at about 7:30 w/interal temp of 195
icon_smile.gif
Thing felt like jelly in that foil pouch! I let it rest for about 45mins and it was great! Very juicy, pulled very easily! I could have let it rest longer as it was super hot to pull LOL. All in all, the Q was a success... and i got pulled pork sandwiches to eat most of the week at work
icon_wink.gif
 
Sounds like a great Christmas cook! And IMO you do not have to be a judge to evaluate your results. What matters is that you are happy with what you make. Of course it is always nice to get confirmation from family and guests and it sounds like you did.

My own plans were a bit more modest. We were originally supposed to serve four so I pulled four lamb steaks out of the freezer. Then we added six more guests and it was not clear that they would enjoy the lamb so I picked up a pack of nine thick center cut boneless pork chops. I thought six would be enough but I cooked all nine so I could freeze the extras. Unfortunately there was not enough left to freeze. I cut both lamb and pork into 1" strips so our guests could serve as little or as much of each as they cared for and it seems like they went for "much."
icon_biggrin.gif


And just in case no one has mentioned this yet, Welcome to TVWBB.
 
Thanks Hank! People give great advice here, and its nice to get ideas from others experience. I have yet to try Lamb, but pork chops are one of our family favorites
icon_smile.gif
Any advice for what i am doing wrong trying to post some pics??
 
Without knowing how you're trying to post pictures it's hard to say why it's not working.

The basic idea is to host the pictures somewhere and post the URL (web address) here using the image button above. (That just embeds it in tags. The only trick is that you need a URL to the image itself (usually ending in .JPG) and not something like HTML that includes the image. I use Picasaweb to host my images and can give you detailed directions for that.

Edit: I was looking for directions on how to post pictures and just found the link at the top of the page: [url="http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/howtouse.html#photo"]http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/howtouse.html#photo[/url] Have you looked at that?
 
Thanks guys! Was my first try cooking in the "basement" Shaun... seems like maybe the temps are considerably cooler down there. Would like to find one of the stainless pcs of metal bent partition off the bottom rack and help keep the airflow to the coals. I tried foiling it up, but was cheap foil
icon_mad.gif
And George, the ribs went w/in half hour! Today, i finish up the last of the pulled pork
icon_wink.gif
Biggest lesson learned is that i need to practice pulling the pork.... i left a lot of "junk" in it
icon_frown.gif
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

 

Back
Top