Christmas dinner with friends 12-23-17

Christmas dinner with friends 12-23-17

Today’s smoke is chicken thighs and pork ribs.

I tried the Heinz Kansas City Sweet and Smoky BBQ sauce on this smoke. It was fairly thick and easy to apply with the squirt top lid. I apply the sauce to both sides of the meat.

I smoothed out the sauce out with a silicon brush. The bristles are hard enough to push the sauce around and you’ll never lose a bristle in the food. It took me 45 minutes to get out the smoker, apply the sauce and load the smoker.

I used up an old bag of hickory chips that was 2 trays and a tray of apple wood chip.

In the past I’ve done ribs and chicken together at 225*F for 5 hours with fabulous results. To do a little change up I set the temperature to 200*F for today’s smoke. I started the smoker with the meat on the racks at 11:13 am. The smoker was at 51*F because it just came out of my garage. Doing a cold start with the wood chips gets a lot of smoke going fast. The air vent on top of my Masterbuilt 30” Electric Smoker was ¼ way open and I put no water in the drip pan.

The smoker heats from the bottom so I put the thighs on the upper racks so the rising smoke has more concentration to soak through the skin. I leave the skin on to keep the moisture in.

Today is a sunny 60*F day with almost no breeze. It is a perfect day for smoking.

At 12:18 I added another tray of apple wood chips and opened the top vent to let some of the moisture out so I wasn’t steaming the meat. I did not open the door because it lets the heat out too. I could hear liquids sizzling in the dip pan and the steam was rolling out of the vent.

At 4:00 pm I turned off the smoker, closed the vent and left the door closed so the meat could continue to cook.

I pulled the meat at 4:42 pm. So it cooked for about 5 hours because of the cold start.

The chicken was perfect with crispy skin and moist meat that is falling off of the bone.

The ribs could have gone a couple more hours with the heat bumped up to 225*F. They had great flavor and were cooked through to well done but the meat was firmer than I would have liked it to be. They must have come off of an older hog and started out on the tough side. When I cut the ends off when I was filling the racks and applying sauce I noticed it was not as tender as we usually get at COCTCO. Now we all know to check the ribs. If I’d cooked them like beef ribs they would have been perfect. Of course, playing with 200*F was a factor too.

The ribs tasted great but they were not falling off of the bone. You can see in the picture that the meat hadn’t shrunk back on the bones.

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!