BARDSLJR

So here is installment #1: this is the prime brisket, trimmed and subbed with Maldon salt and coarse ground pepper. It goes on the smoker tonight at 250* at midnight, mostly post oak wood. (Thank you, BBQ Guru!), then I get to sleep and by 8 AM it should be ready to wrap and amp up the heat a bit to 275*. It's a beautiful piece of meat and the trimming was very easy.

I have to say, just about perfect. I think I have the formula, or very close to it with small adjustments. So this was it- applied Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust Rub; 2 hours at 235 in the KK, take out, spritz with water/orange juice mix, wrap in foil; back in for one hour, advance heat to 250; take out of foil and finish for last hour. Mostly apple wood with good hardwood lump charcoal. Really about as close to perfect as I have done. Minor tweaks to formula to follow. I was playing BBQ Santa Claus for all the neighbors up and down the street- some people show up with Christmas cookies, I give away ribs and sauce. Neighbors are happy and I am doing another batch tomorrow along with a brisket I am starting tonight.

Yeah, that's what I MEANT to say...🤤

So, the final version: First photo is halfway through, about 5 hours; second is the finished product, nice bark. Lastly, pulled and chopped for serving. It turned out excellent, fed the whole family, and the Stansbury clan took home the other half for leftovers. And that was just one shoulder.....the other we will start reheating tonight and use here in various incarnations: sandwiches, enchiladas, hash, etc. Pulled pork souffle, anyone? There was one glitch in an otherwise perfect, BBQ Guru-controlled cook: the plan was to wrap the shoulder in foil two hours before finishing (at about 190 degrees) and increase the temperature from 275* to 295*. Problem was, even though I had filled up the fuel basket full, there wasn't enough charcoal left to get the temp up. This was puzzling: I have filled the fuel basket before and had enough to run the KK for 24 hours before the temps starting dropping off. The only thing I can think of is that this charcoal was the last of the bag, from the bottom, and had a high proportion of very small chunks, so maybe they burn faster and/or don't have as much thermal energy???? It's a physics question, and as a liberal arts major, I am notoriously short on formal scientific training, so really, I don't know. In any case, it was in foil by this point, and was benefiting only from the heat, not the smoke, so I finished it in the oven, no big deal. It was delicious.

Let's try that again....

So, here's the beginning of the cook: first, the pork shoulders were slathered with yellow mustard and doused with Dizzy Pig's Dizzy Dust rub and left to sit in the fridge overnight. Next, the 32" KK was set up with the BBQ Guru and the Cloud BBQ remote meat sensors. Lastly, the KK is shown in business mode, ramping up. At the moment I am leisurely monitoring it from the loft, a second cup of very good Jack Mormon coffee (from Salt Lake City) and scrambled eggs and boudin, the latter from Opelousas, La. The boudin is so strong with black pepper that I have broken a blinding head sweat, and my tongue has gone numb, but it all good..... IMG_1964 2.HEIC IMG_1966 2.HEIC IMG_1967 3.HEIC

Troble, do you lose the bark when you put all that liquid on it? Tony, those are all good suggestions. I am also thinking pulled pork enchiladas and pulled pork hash with potatoes, onions and bell peppers, maybe with an egg over it.

Planning to cook two 7.5 lb pork shoulders tomorrow, not that I need 15 lbs of pork shoulder to feed our extended family(3 grandkids, my daughter and her husband, my wife and I) , but that's the way Costco sells them. So we will be eating pulled pork in various forms all week, likely. But the question is this: to wrap or not to wrap. Franklin recommends wrapping in foil at about 8 hours into a 10 hour cook, continuing for one hour at 270*, and finishing the last hour at 295*. I don't think I've ever wrapped my pork shoulder and they've always turned out great. I also have been cooking at 285, if memory serves. What do you guys (and gals) do?

All I got from the attachment was audio....

Sorry, that didn't come through. But, FYI, I use the leftover beef ribs and some leftover red beans and made beef-and-beans enchiladas with cheese. It was pretty rich, but otherwise excellent. I used he Hatch Fresh Chile Sauce and it was quite good.

Wingman, That is a beautiful batch of ribs. How long is the total cook, and what temp? I ‘m using the last of the three racks of beef ribs ( pictured) with some leftover red beans and sausage, shredding and adding the meat to the beans to make filling for beef and beans enchiladas with red Chile sauce from the Hatch Fresh Chile Company down in your neck of the woods. It will be a mix of mild and medium, as the medium is a bit hot for us. Should be yummy.

That's about as much as I drank last night....(Just kidding. I had a 9AM tennis match and had to be restrained. I also drank a whole bottle of Pelligrino between 9 and 10 as a substitute.....) What is this, NOrth Berkeley Wine or something?

Agreed, I spend the first 20 minutes and whole cup of coffee every morning deleting emails and texts. This is what happens when you send them a little money....like feeding a stray dog.

Yum, JonJ! Looking good!

I am going through my stock at an alarming rate. I am not sure my liver can stand this election.

Well, I think we agree on "feckless". Rake is certainly inconsistent and unpredictable, with a wildly vacillating moral compass. I love the ironic humor of the series. Whoever recommended "Jack Irish", thank you. I found it on the Acorn network that I added to my Amazon Prime account, a treasure trove of mostly British television. I love film noir, and it would not be inaccurate to call this "television noir". I should have known it is based on books by Peter Temple, perhaps the premier Australian mystery writer.

Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh. I don’t know how I will sleep tomorrow. The polls look good, but... my favorite winery in Oregon offered a half case special “ to get you through next Tuesday”. Pretty funny, but on reflection I was not sure it was enough.

I don’t think I gave too much away, but you will know those scenes when you see them. And the episode with accident prone would -be new girlfriend. ” Feckless” hmmm, no I don’t agree. He is certainly not lacking in initiative or strength of character. But yes, he’s certainly irresponsible. Love the ironic humor at play in this show. i will look for Jack Irish.

Loved "Rake": so many great scenes-the fight with the guy who pushes the street crossing button after he just did it; the fight with the barrista who wants a name to put on his cup (" but there's no one else here, mate!")....I do think the series went on a season or two too long, and the writers ran out of fresh ideas. Another good bet was the New Zealand series "West Side", although it, too, went on too long and there were some bizarre casting changes.

And finally, the third rack, which was a little bigger than the other two, took about 30 minutes longer to cook, but came out BEAUTIFUL. Nice, crispy, dark bark. Insanely delicious aroma..... Can't wait to start cutting these up and serve to the family.

And here we have a photo of progress at 3 PM, about six hours into the cook, and we are running around 193-195 range for each of the three racks. So I am estimating finishing around 4 or so. Perfect. I was earlier concerned that it was cooking so fast that I might finish too early, and I reset the Guru to 250*. Of course, it would have taken most of 90 minutes to fall that low from 285. Around 2:30 I popped the goal temp setting back to 285, concerned that I achieve a good bark. I am loving the Guru. Can't wait to do a brisket or a turkey.

Well, boys and girls, lads and lassies, fellow cooks: I have my new BBQ Guru all set up for the first time and am doing some fabulous beef chuck ribs, using most post oak and a little cherry. So, we have some nice fresh, not frozen, beef chuck ribs to start with and the new BBQ Guru DynaQ is all ready to go to work. The Guru got set up in the 32" KK , which was loaded with lump charcoal and post oak chunks with a couple of chunks of cherry thrown in, just because. The ribs got slathered with some original Scott's BBQ sauce (mostly vinegar and red pepper, emulsified. Then medium coarse salt and coarse pepper was applied. I love the way the Guru is working, doing a great job keeping the KK pretty pretty close to it's 285* target. I do wish the Bluetooth was a little more robust, as my Iphone seems to lose contact if I go inside, which is only about maybe 50 feet and a wall between me and the Guru. The Ipad seems to be a little better connected- go figure. At this point (11:30AM) the ribs have been in a little more than 2 hours and I am a bit shocked that they seem to be cooking so fast- already at 170 or so on their way to 203*, and I had budgeted 8 hours or more for cook, as previous experience and recipes indicated. I don't expect a stall with beef ribs, but maybe it will happen. So stay tuned, folks, but I am loving the control that the Guru offers.

Aussie Ora: yes, that makes sense: if you haven't got the walls of the KK fully warmed up, and your temperature reading is reflecting primarily the air temperature, getting the heat level to drop would be less problematic. BTW, binge-watching "Rake", a wonderfully done (albeit it might have gone on a season or two too long) got us through the Coronavirus quarantine period last spring.

Gorgeous looking ribs. My experience with my 32" KK is that it is very difficult to get it to reduce temperature once it ramps up. I have had to build up to cooking temp really slowly so not to overshoot it, and then tamp down on the air flow to level it off. I will be using a BBQ Guru for long cooks in the future, so hopefully I will have addressed the control issue. Thank you for clarifying "Ora"- I would have never figured that out. Netflix has made a lot of Australian television accessible, and I can usually figure things out from context: when the guy in "Mr. In-Between"says "we're going out for dimmies", I get he's meaning dim sum dumplings. Some of the language in Peter Temple's excellent mystery books, I just have to guess or Google. (By the way, "Secret City" and "Wanted" were excellent, too. Thank you, my Australian cousins!

BTW, there is an added benefit to this approach. Wood, even cured wood, is made up of nearly 50% water, while charcoal has very little moisture. So when you are burning wood, you raise the humidity level in your cooker, which benefits the meat- we are all trying to get our meat cooked to a given temperature to break down the collagens and get it tender, but we want to avoid drying it out- ergo, more wood in the mix is beneficial.