Anyone else tried out their smoker yet?

[Eoin]

I've given mine a few tries at this point, with varying degrees of success.

I made my own rub with brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, chili powder and salt and pepper.

I did chicken a few times, turned out really nice, very tasty, good smoke ring. I did a spatchcock chicken too and it was great.

I did texas ribs...it was a disaster, it was as if something dead had crawled inside me, I gassed myself out of it for a whole day after, the wife was terrified of it too. I wasted about a tenners worth of ribs as I was afraid to touch them again. Anyone got any ideas as to why this might happen? It was truly woeful.

Next on the list is pork shoulder and I should be giving that a try halloween week so I'll have a report back on that once I've tried it out.

[lordstilton]

What type of ribs? How long you cook them for? What temp? Did they bend when you lifted them with a tongs?

[Pheeel]

DPD couldn't find my house so they returned the smoker Luckily it's getting resent

Would like to know what was wrong with the ribs. Have you made any mods to the smoker yet?

[Leann ull]

I did texas ribs...it was a disaster, it was as if something dead had crawled inside me, I gassed myself out of it for a whole day after, the wife was terrified of it too. I wasted about a tenners worth of ribs as I was afraid to touch them again. It was truly woeful.

I have to stop reading this forum in coffee houses as uncontrollable hysterical laughter is not a positive public attribute, sorry for your trouble.

[nigel_c]

Ribs sticky or sour at all?
Any chance you may have gone too low and slow?

[Eoin]

They were texas beef ribs. They tasted delicious. I did them dry rub and then with a wet barbecue sauce from heinz when they were well on. Temp was inconsistent but finished around 120c, had been as high as 170. I put in a tray of water to slow them a bit later on.

[Eoin]

I used my meat thermometer on them so know the temps were good.

[Eoin]

The ribs were cooked for about 7-8 hours. They were large beef rib pieces so didn't bend. No mods made to the smoker yet, I can get a pretty steady burn out of it. It has an open bottom unlike the one in the mod pics,the sealing is really the issue.

[lordstilton]

All sounds like you did them right..meat thermometer doesn't lie ..google texas crutch...its a great way to speed thing up and make them really tender.

[Eoin]

No ideas as to why I nearly gassed myself....and the dog?

I suspect the garlic and onion powders in the dry rub, or eating a lot of the bark...I'd love to know what it was though, because I want to avoid it at  all costs in the future.

[Eoin]

Thanks for the info Garrett, done a bit of checking on texas crutch, makes sense, makes it like a hybrid between my oven pulled pork and a smoker pulled pork.