Richard Sharpe
New member
Firstly - a Happy New Year to everyone!!
I completed my first cook on the WSM yesterday. I have to thank everyone who has provided tips on this site - both directly to my posts and elsewhere. The information really was invaluable.
Anyhoo... my observations from my first run:
1. The temperature of the cooker took some time to get up to 240 at the lid - even with all vents wide open. I was using the Minion method, and the log gives full details. More on this in point 3.
2. As a first go, I was aiming for 'fall off the bone' style ribs. I wouldn't have cared if they were too mushy. I wanted to see what the WSM (and the foiling method) could do. Well - the ribs were good, but they were nowhere near 'fall off the bone'. Did I not cook long enough? Perhaps it's because the ribs came frozen?
3. During cleanup, I noticed that only one side of the foil under the water pan was black; the other side was smoke colored. Further investigation showed that the charcoal on one side of the chamber as almost untouched. This is despite me spreading the 16 hot coals from the chimney evenly on the unlit chamber at the start of the process. Perhaps this is the reason I had a few problems with the temperature dropping away a little at the end. Any comments?
4. I forgot to remove (rather I couldn't find) the membrane on one of the racks. D'oh! Came off OK after cooking though. And didn't seem to make too much difference in the results (vs membrane removed ribs)?
Full details (including cook log and photos) here:
http://www.sharpey.com/Q/Ribs.htm
(Click on the photos for bigger versions)
cheers!
Sharpey
I completed my first cook on the WSM yesterday. I have to thank everyone who has provided tips on this site - both directly to my posts and elsewhere. The information really was invaluable.
Anyhoo... my observations from my first run:
1. The temperature of the cooker took some time to get up to 240 at the lid - even with all vents wide open. I was using the Minion method, and the log gives full details. More on this in point 3.
2. As a first go, I was aiming for 'fall off the bone' style ribs. I wouldn't have cared if they were too mushy. I wanted to see what the WSM (and the foiling method) could do. Well - the ribs were good, but they were nowhere near 'fall off the bone'. Did I not cook long enough? Perhaps it's because the ribs came frozen?
3. During cleanup, I noticed that only one side of the foil under the water pan was black; the other side was smoke colored. Further investigation showed that the charcoal on one side of the chamber as almost untouched. This is despite me spreading the 16 hot coals from the chimney evenly on the unlit chamber at the start of the process. Perhaps this is the reason I had a few problems with the temperature dropping away a little at the end. Any comments?
4. I forgot to remove (rather I couldn't find) the membrane on one of the racks. D'oh! Came off OK after cooking though. And didn't seem to make too much difference in the results (vs membrane removed ribs)?
Full details (including cook log and photos) here:
http://www.sharpey.com/Q/Ribs.htm
(Click on the photos for bigger versions)
cheers!
Sharpey