Tag: offset smoker

Apple Themed Smoked Ribs

Writ­ten: 1/2/2023

Notes for char­coal smoked St. Louis ribs with an apple theme pulling from a vari­ety of online recipes and ideas

What

Char­coal-smoked St. Louis ribs

Ingredients

1 rack of St. Louis ribs, mus­tard, rice wine, soy sauce, apple juice, 1–2 apples, apple­wood chips, spices

Spices: coarse/Kosher salt, fresh-cracked pep­per­corn, brown sug­ar, gar­lic pow­der, onion pow­der, cumin, papri­ka, dill weed/pickle sea­son­ing

Foil or peach paper

Time

Prep, Overnight, 3–5 hours in smok­er

Steps

  • Com­bine the spices in a bowl: coarse salt, pep­per, brown sug­ar, gar­lic pow­der, onion pow­der, cumin, papri­ka
  • Very impor­tant: remove the con­nec­tive tis­sue lin­ing the bone side of the ribs: Slide a but­ter knife under the film on a bone. Care­ful­ly wig­gle until you can grasp the film and then pull. It should come right off clean­ly.
  • Cut the rack into 2 if you want (you can also sea­son them dif­fer­ent­ly if desired)
  • Add soy sauce, rice wine, and mus­tard, spread­ing even­ly on both sides
  • Rub the com­bined spices into the meat on both sides
  • Very light­ly, sprin­kle a hint of dill/pickle sea­son­ing
  • Use plas­tic wrap to tight­ly bind the rack
  • Refrig­er­ate overnight

Smok­ing day

  • Take the meat out and let it get to room tem­per­a­ture
  • Option­al­ly, soak some apple­wood or pecan chips (there is plen­ty of argu­ment about the func­tion­al­i­ty of this on the inter­net)
  • Pre­pare the smok­er (my set up is quite involved, so it’s a good time killer)
  • Start the char­coal in the chim­ney starter (don’t use lighter flu­id)
  • Fin­ish prep­ping the ther­mome­ters, tongs, and work­space
  • Cut the fresh apples into pieces
  • When the char­coal is ready, pour it into the fire­box and add a few chips and 1 or 2 apple slices. Yes, apple slices! (apple gives off this neato per­fume when it burns)
  • Let the tem­per­a­ture get to be around 250F or so and put the ribs bone side down at the high­est point (I’m using a ver­ti­cal off­set smok­er)
  • Ribs can be smoked any­where between 225F to 300F and they’ll still end up great. Faster cook at high­er temps, slow­er at low­er temps (duh.)
  • Note: When cook­ing with char­coal, big­ger chunks are good for longer even burn­ing, and small­er chunks give high heat faster. Adjust accord­ing to your cook­ing goals
  • About 30 min­utes in and at 60 min­utes throw in your wood chips and apple pieces. Remem­ber that you can add smoke fla­vor, but you can’t take it away, so be wary of over-smok­ing your meat. I per­son­al­ly don’t like a lot of smoke fla­vor, so that’s it for the chips at this step for the rest of the cook.
  • About 1.5 to 2 hours in (depend­ing on amount of meat), remove the ribs. They should have a nice bark on them at this point.
  • Brush on or spritz some apple juice all over the meat
  • Using peach paper (or foil), wrap the ribs
  • Place them back in the smok­er
  • Add more char­coal to main­tain the tem­per­a­ture and any remain­ing chips or apple pieces
  • After 1–2 hours, do the bounce/bend test: if you give the ribs a nice shake and they start to crack, then they’re done. If not, then brush on some more apple juice and let ’em keep cook­ing.
  • Good inter­nal temp for the meat is, appar­ent­ly, 180–200F
  • When they’re done, let the ribs sit for a lit­tle and then serve

What hap­pened to me is that it was get­ting dark, the air tem­per­a­ture was rapid­ly drop­ping, and I did­n’t want to start up anoth­er batch of char­coal, so I took them inside and put them in the con­vec­tion toast­er oven at 275 for an hour. The end prod­uct was real­ly, quite good. I like sub­tle fla­vors, and this was sub­tle on every lev­el: light­ly sweet from the apple juice, per­fect hint of smoke, no over­pow­er­ing spices, a good bark crust despite the apple juice and peach paper. No need for BBQ sauce! The only thing that could have made it bet­ter was cook­ing at the high­er tem­per­a­tures the whole time (except I had oth­er meats in there, too) and putting enough char­coal in there to achieve that.

I love apples!

Dyna-Glo Vertical Offset Smoker Notes

I’ve owned my unit since ear­ly 2020 as a new­bie smok­er get­ting the cheap­est (mean­ing thin met­al, bad joints and seams) smok­er I could find and also being the light­est smok­er for my ele­vat­ed deck. After some shoring up of said seams, etc, I’ve kept it around and quite enjoy smok­ing meats.

Unlike more auto­mat­ed smok­ers, this smok­er requires more atten­tion whilst cook­ing. Here are some notes for my future ref­er­ence and if it will help any­one.

Smok­ing in the winter/cold weath­er

  • More fuel need­ed
  • Longer cook­ing time (almost dou­ble or triple depend­ing on the weath­er) because it’s a fight to increase temps
  • Help­ful to have some­thing to help retain heat (e.g. thermal/ weld­ing blan­ket, large sheets of met­al or the like set around the unit to reflect heat back)
  • Small­er char­coal pieces burns hot­ter and faster than larg­er pieces for quick­er temp increas­es

Smok­ing in summer/hot weath­er

  • Faster cook­ing time
  • Less fuel need­ed
  • Help­ful to have shade over the unit like a patio umbrel­la to help with sun-dri­ven tem­per­a­ture increas­es.
  • More large chunk char­coal (slow­er burn so won’t dri­ve temps high quick­ly) than small pieces (burn hot and fast)

Tem­per­a­ture con­trol

  • Clos­ing inlet and out­let will starve the oxy­gen and decrease tem­per­a­ture
  • Open­ing inlet and out­let will increase oxy­gen, increas­ing tem­per­a­ture
  • Clos­ing out­let and open­ing inlet can cause cre­osyte which makes food bit­ter
  • Open­ing the out­let and min­i­miz­ing the inlet caus­es a vac­u­um that draws more air through caus­ing temp increase
  • Ful­ly clos­ing all vents puts out char­coal (although that takes a long time)
  • Open­ing of door or fire­box decreas­es tem­per­a­ture
  • Though not rec­om­mend­ed, open­ing and leav­ing the door par­tial­ly closed will keep the tem­per­a­ture from going too high (had to do because I put way too much char­coal in for the sum­mer and I have noth­ing to store extra burn­ing char­coal in. How­ev­er, it changes the cook­ing and taste)
  • Try not to freak out when the tem­per­a­ture goes too high or too low because open­ing and clos­ing the doors will cause the tem­per­a­ture to be all over the place. Fid­dling with the vents will allow the temps to rise and fall more grad­u­al­ly

Gen­er­al Notes

  • Make sure to clean cook­ing grates often as left­over debris goes ran­cid, can mold, and affect not only safe­ty of food (smok­ers oper­ate at low tem­per­a­tures cre­at­ing ide­al con­di­tions for ther­mophilic bac­te­ria) but taste of the food too (Blech, sad­ly, from expe­ri­ence).
  • Lin­ing the bot­tom of the smok­er with foil helps catch drip­pings
  • The floor of my fire­box and under the soot tray are def­i­nite­ly rusty out from rain and mois­ture, despite use of Dyna-Glo’s cov­er
  • Built-in ther­mome­ter is only an indi­ca­tor and not accu­rate
  • Using a water bath can be help­ful to keep more mois­ture in the meat. I place a small foil loaf pan with water on the floor of the cook­ing side. You can add juice to it, just be care­ful because it can change the fla­vor of the meat. I used too much apple cider vine­gar once from a recipe and it gave every­thing a sour taste/smell
  • I also placed a fire brick on the floor of the cook­ing side because it sup­pos­ed­ly helps with more con­stant heat dis­si­pa­tion? I’ve been using it since the begin­ning, so I can’t say if it is use­ful or not.
  • Wood chips
    • I’ve found through time that my fam­i­ly and I don’t like heavy smoke on the food. In my opin­ion, less is more.
    • Some peo­ple ral­ly against it, but I like to soak my chips before use. Has a side bonus of slight­ly reduc­ing tem­per­a­ture when it’s wet
    • Apple and Pecan have a nice, light fla­vor
    • Cher­ry also has a nice fla­vor, but will give the meat a red col­or, too
    • Hick­o­ry is strong, so less used the bet­ter
    • Mesquite is very strong. Less is def­i­nite­ly bet­ter. I per­son­al­ly don’t like to use it.
    • My favorite wood chips fla­vors (the ones I keep going to every time) are apple and pecan.

Use­ful Items

  • Heat gloves
  • Wire­less ther­mome­ter with mul­ti­ple probes
  • Sunglasses/safety glass­es (smoke in your eyes is not par­tic­u­lar­ly fun)
  • Foil loaf pan for water bath
  • Weber lighter cubes
  • Chim­ney starter
  • Large chunk lump Kama­do char­coal
  • Nor­mal lump char­coal that con­tains small­er pieces
  • Met­al pail with secure lid to respon­si­bly place char­coal waste
  • Fire bricks
  • Grate scrub­ber and clean­er
  • Wood chips
  • My safe­ty fea­tures:
    • Pro­tec­tive mat under smok­er (like an Ember Mat) espe­cial­ly if using on wood deck
    • Heat shield on top of pro­tec­tive mat to pro­tect deck from heat and reflect it back at the smok­er
    • Old pans to help catch tiny pieces of burn­ing char­coal when pour­ing into fire­box
    • Mini, round, portable char­coal grill to hold chim­ney starter
    • Safe­ty glass­es
    • Heat gloves
    • Long tongs