How To Light My Fire (Starting the Smoker via the Minion Method)

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
Starting the Smoker (Minion Method):
 - Light a fire starter chimney full of charcoal
 - Put a ring of unlit charcoal in the base of the smoker
 - Add a few chunks of wood
 - Cover the water pan in foil for easy cleanup
 - Add the lit coals from fire starter chimney to the center of the ring of unlit charcoal
 - Assemble the rest of the smoker, adding hot water to the water pan
 - Add wood to the top of the lit coals to start the smoking (either before assembly or through the side door)
 - Add your meat... and you're off!

I have eluded to my method for firing up my smoker in previous blog posts, but I realize I did so in a relatively high level manner. So, here's a post dedicated solely to my main method for starting my Weber Smokey Mountain.

It's worth mentioning, this technique is not necessary if you are going to cook something that only takes a short time on the smoker (such as smoked salmon). However, most of the things I have been cooking so far - ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, etc. - all require 4+ hours of smoke time, so this method works well.

The method is called the Minion Method. You can google it to read more about its history if you want. But essentially, the game plan behind it is to set up a ring of unlit coals in the smoker, and then put a chamber full of hot coals in the middle of it. As those hot coals burn continually, they slowly start to light the unlit coals surrounding them. And from there, the fire burns longer, and the smoker maintains heat for a longer period of time.

But enough talk - let's get into how I actually do it, with some pictures.

Newspaper in the bottom of the fire starter chimney

Lighting the newspaper

Coals blazing and ready to go

To get started on any smoker or grill that runs on coals, you have to light them on fire. Some people may choose to use a pile of charcoal and some lighter fluid, but I think most would agree that a fire chimney starter is the best approach.

To use it, you simply fill the bottom with some newspaper, as in picture #1. Then, turn it over and fill the chamber with unlit charcoal (I use the Kingsford Blue & White). Depending on the length of cook determines how much charcoal you need to light. The more you light, the longer and hotter the fire will burn in the smoker. I usually aim for about 3/4th of the way full for my longer cooks like pork shoulder and brisket (10+ hours), and will do a bit less for something like ribs (4-5 hours).

Once you've filled the chimney as you like, light the newspaper through the bottom slots in a few different areas, as I'm doing in picture #2. Once the paper is lit, you'll start seeing smoke pour out of the chimney. And from there, the process is started. Within about 10-15 minutes, the charcoal will all be lit, as shown in picture #3. You can tell they're ready when the orange of the flame has made its way all the way near the top of the charcoal.

During that 10-15 minute waiting period, you can start assembling the rest of the smoker and setting up the rest of the unlit charcoal.

Unlit charcoal in a ring with space in the middle

Adding a few chunks of wood

Covering the water bowl in foil

The first thing you can do while the charcoals are lighting is set up the base of the smoker. As you can see in the first of these pictures, you will take a bunch of unlit charcoal and put it in a circular ring. You have to leave space in the middle of it, because that's where the lit charcoal is going to go.

This is the key to the Minion Method, as mentioned previously. With the lit coals sitting in the center of that ring, the unlit coals that surround them will slowly start to burn throughout the entire cooking process. Thus, the fire lasts longer.

In the second of these pictures, you can see that I added a few pieces of wood to the unlit coals. These, too, will pick up the heat from the lit coals over time add more smoke to the smoker, at a later time.

Lastly, and just for the sake of making clean-up easier, I cover the water bowl in foil as you can see in the last picture of this group. Throughout the cook, the various smoked meats drip fat and juices into this bowl, which is already filled with water. The combination is pretty gross. So when clean-up time comes, having the ability to just pour out the water, take off the foil, and throw it all out, makes everything easier.

Unassembled Weber Smokey Mountain

The first picture of this group is the Weber Smokey Mountain, unassembled, but ready to be put together. All that is missing is the addition of the hot coals. 

On the left is the base, where you can see the ring of unlit coals and the few pieces of wood that I added. In the middle of the picture is the middle of the smoker. I should have had a closer up shot to show this better, but you can see just a bit of the water pan covered in foil, and then the grate put on top of it. 

You can also see my thermometer base hanging on the outside. I don't have a picture of it here, but this is connected to two wires and temperature gauges inside of the smoker - one for the grill temperature, and the other for the meat temperature. You can also see the Weber Smokey Mountain's door, which can be used to stoke the fire, add air to increase temperature, and add wood throughout the cook. (In fact, the last time I made my ribs, I didn't use enough lit charcoal to get the grill temperature hot enough, when combined with the outside air temperature being only 30F. Because of that, I had to open the smoker door for about 10 minutes, and it increased my grill temperature from 200F to 280F. Then I closed the door, partially closed some of the vents, and brought the temperature back into the 225-240F range I was targeting).

To the right, you can see the lid. Pretty self-explanatory there - but just in case, it goes on top when everything is assembled.

Lit coals poured on top of unlit coals

As the final step, you take the fire chimney full of red-hot coal (as pictured back at the beginning), and you pour it into the center of the ring of unlit coals. You would then want to place 2-3 pieces of wood on top of the lit coals, as they'll start the smoking process immediately. If you aren't going to be putting your meat on pretty much right away, you can hold off on this step, and add the wood chunks through the side door when you're ready to put on the meat.

After this, you can assemble the rest of the smoker. Put the middle section on top of the bottom section, filling the water pan with hot water (in most cook cases, but not all - depends on the specific recipe), and put the lid on top of it all. 

I aways leave the top vent on the lid open, throughout the entire cook. I also leave the bottom three vents open when I first assemble the smoker, to let the temperature start raising. Once it hits my target temperature inside the smoker (typically 225F degrees area), I begin playing with the vents to get it to level off and stop increasing, closing some of the vents partially or entirely (though again, never the top vent - I always leave that fully open).

And with that, the smoker is ready for some meat.. until next time!

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
Starting the Smoker (Minion Method):
 - Light a fire starter chimney full of charcoal
 - Put a ring of unlit charcoal in the base of the smoker
 - Add a few chunks of wood
 - Cover the water pan in foil for easy cleanup
 - Add the lit coals from fire starter chimney to the center of the ring of unlit charcoal
 - Assemble the rest of the smoker, adding hot water to the water pan
 - Add wood to the top of the lit coals to start the smoking (either before assembly or through the side door)
 - Add your meat... and you're off!

First Attempt at Smoked Salmon

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:

Smoked Salmon:

 - Rinse the salmon, put in a cooking dish covered in dark rum, and place in the fridge for 15 minutes

 - Make the brine, combining1.5 tbsp black pepper, 3/4 cup coarse sale, and 1.5 cups brown sugar

 - Pull salmon, cover in the brine all over, and place back in the fridge for 4 hours

 - Rinse of extra brine and put the salmon on the smoker at a temp of 200-225 degrees

 - When internal temp of the salmon his 140 degrees (after 1.5-2 hours), pull it off the smoker

 - Serve with cracker and cream cheese

Last Sunday, November 2, we didn't have much going on, so I decided it would be another good opportunity to use my smoker. However, having been only two weeks removed from my multi-meat smokefest for the FSU gamemulti-meat smokefest for the ND/FSU game, I wanted to think of something a little "less" meaty. This past summer, while at Kristen's parents house in KC, we had some of her dad's smoked salmon - something I haven't eaten a lot of in my life - and it was outstanding. So, I decided this would be a good opportunity to give it a try myself, and with that came my first go at smoked salmon.

I read a few of my go-to blogs on bbq/smoking for advice (Amazing Ribs and Virtual Weber Bullet - I highly recommend both for all your smoking questions that I haven't covered yet), got some advice from my father-in-law, Rick, and then just did some of my usual googling to see what else the web had to say about the process of smoking salmon. Piecing a few different approaches together, I settled on this approach.

For starters, I had to buy the salmon. You may have been surprised in my last post to find out I get a lot of my meat from Costco. Well, you may be even more surprised to find out I got my salmon from Costco as well.

Pre-packaged salmon filet from Costco

Label close-up - 3.29lbs!

As you can see, the piece of salmon that I settled on was 3.29lbs, which seemed like way too much. But in typical Costco fashion, it was about the smallest that they offered. Plus, my plan for this smoke session was to make plenty of extras to freeze and have at a later date, so I didn't mind using the larger piece of fish.

The next step was to take the salmon out of the wrapper and begin removing the skin and any extra bones that are still in it.

The full 3.29lb salmon filet laid across two cutting boards

Upon removing the salmon from the packaging, I got my first two surprises of the day. Surprise #1 was that this filet was folded over in the packaging, and was even larger than I initially thought it was. I know the picture above doesn't necessarily do it justice, but I had to break out two cutting boards to spread it out in it's entirety. It was huge.

Surprise #2 was a pleasant one - it had already been completely cleaned. The skin and all the bones were already removed. I did have a plan for doing all of that myself. But since I didn't end up having to do it, I'm not going to talk about that here. Maybe next time (though I'm more than happy never having to do it either!).

So with the fish out, I first ran it under some cold water and patted it down with a paper towel. This was just to clean it off a bit, though I have to admit, the salmon came out very clean and smelled very fresh. Costco - quality meat and quality fish!

As mentioned earlier, after getting advice from a few different people and websites, I decided that I was going to give the salmon a rum and brown sugar dry brine prior to smoking it. So at this point, it was time to let it sit in some dark rum for a bit. 

Barcardi Gold for my dark rum, for no particular reason

Salmon folded up to fit in a large baking dish

Salmon sitting in the rum

As you can see from the above, I put the salmon in a large baking dish. Because of it's size, I had to fold it over a bit. I then poured the entire bottle of dark rum on top of it. If I had planned a little better for the size of the salmon, I would have either a) found a large dish to use so it could all stretch out flat or b) bot more rum to pour in the dish so it was all covered. But this worked fine anyway. From there, I covered it with cellophane, and then put it in the fridge for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, I pulled the salmon from the fridge. I removed it from the pan and rinsed it off in cold water, and patted it down with paper towels. I cleaned out the pan, put the salmon back in it, covered it back up with cellophane, and put it back in the fridge. This entire step wouldn't have happened if I didn't have to go the grocery store to get a few ingredients that I realized I mistakenly didn't have on hand. If I had everything I needed, I would have made the brown sugar dry brine while the salmon was sitting in rum in the fridge, and then gone straight into putting the brine on the salmon, and then putting it back in the fridge. Just fyi. I also didn't want to keep the salmon sitting in rum for an extended time, so that's why I removed it and rinsed it off.

So moving on, after getting all the ingredients, I made the brine. It was a very simple mixture of 1.5 tbsp of black pepper, 3/4 cup of course salt, and 1.5 cups of brown sugar. I mixed it all together in a big bowl and set it aside to put on the salmon. 

I then took the salmon out of the fridge, and started cutting it up. Because I wanted to make this for a future date, and planned to freeze it, I decided it would be best to have it in separate pieces. So I cut the entire thing into 5 roughly similarly sized pieces. Then it was time to put the brine on the salmon.

Salmon cut up into 5 pieces

Putting the salmon pieces in the pan and covering with brown sugar dry brine

Covering every inch of the salmon that I can

Final look at the salmon in the brine before putting in the fridge

The pictures above show the process of covering the salmon in the brine. First, I put sprinkled some of it on the bottom of the cooking dish. I then was able to lay out 3 of the 5 salmon pieces, and covered them all over with the brine. Lastly, I put the remaining two salmon pieces on top (just because of a lack of room in the cooking dish otherwise), and continued to cover the salmon in the brine. When I had used it all up, I covered the dish in cellophane and once again, put it in the fridge for the next four hours.

With about 30 minutes to go until I pull the salmon from the fridge, I fired up my Weber Smokey Mountain. As with any other time I'm getting it started, I got a full chimney of charcoals lit in a fire starter. I didn't bother adding unlit charcoal into the base of the smoker to use the "minion method" (previously mentioned method of helping a fire burn longer) since I wasn't going to need that much heat for that long. The plan is only to cook the salmon for 1.5-2 hours ultimately. I kept most of the lower three vents completely closed because I wanted to get a consistent temperature of the smoker between 200-225 degrees F. 

After having been sitting in the brine for four hours, it was time to pull the salmon out of the fridge.

Last 2 remaining pieces of salmon in the brine

All 5 salmon pieces rinsed and ready to go on the smoker

Close-up look at the darker and firmer salmon after 4 hours in the brine

I pulled the cooking dish out of the fridge and removed the cellophane wrap. I then took each piece of salmon and once again ran it under some cold water to rinse off all the leftover brown sugar brine. You can see from the second and third pictures how the salmon pieces hold a slightly darker color. What you can't see is how they feel, which is a bit firmer. This is because of the brine, which is often thought to give meat or fish a spongy kind of feel. 

I then moved the salmon outside and put them on the smoker, which had been running consistently in the 200-225 degree temperature range. 

All five pieces on the top rack

Fully fired up smoker with salmon!

You can see all five pieces of salmon laid out on the top rack of my smoker, in no particular order. I also have the internal smoker temperature gauge on the rack, as well as a "meat" thermometer inserted in one of the pieces. The temperature of the smoker when I put the salmon on was specifically 215 degrees.

Once I had the salmon on the smoker, I added 3-4 pieces of cherry wood through the smoke door. This got the process of actual smoking going, and was plenty to cover the salmon throughout the smoke.

My plan was to have the salmon on the smoker for 1.5-2 hours. However, I also didn't want to let the fish internal temperature to raise much above 140 degrees. After one hour on the smoker, the fish temperature was hitting 140 degrees on the thermometer. But I was worried that it hadn't been sitting on the smoker long enough. So I went out and checked with an instant read thermometer, and found that most pieces were coming up closer to 120 degrees. So I decided to keep the fish on longer.

After another 35 minutes, having been on smoker for a total of an hour and thirty-five minutes, I found most of the salmon pieces to have a temperature of around 140-150 degrees. There was also a piece that was closer to 155 degrees. So ultimately, I may have over-cooked them all a bit, as ideally they all would have been right at 140 degrees when I pulled them. Either way, they were done, and I pulled them off the smoker.

Final look before pulling the salmon off the smoker

Smoked salmon!

Smoked salmon close-up!

After pulling the salmon off the smoker, I let them sit out on the counter for a bit as I wanted them to cool down. You can see how much darker they are now, as they have been taking on a lot of smoke the entire time.

Given my plan to freeze these for later, I put them all individually in the freezer uncovered, to let them get hard. This way, when I freeze-wrapped them, they wouldn't get smushed (from being too soft). So I freeze-wrapped each one, and they are sitting in my freezer as we speak, just waiting for the right occasions to break them out to eat.

I did keep one of the pieces out for us to try. It had a great smokey taste, with just a hint of sweetness coming from the rum and brown sugar brine. While it wasn't too bad, it definitely was a bit over-cooked. The best way to tell was when I would run a fork across it, it wasn't flaking up as easily as I would have liked. It was moist, but once again, I'd prefer it to be a little moreso. But I had intentionally chosen the thinnest piece as our test run, so presumably, it was the most over-cooked of the bunch.  We'll see! I'll be serving the others some day soon with some crackers and cream cheese. Can't wait to see how it goes.

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:

Smoked Salmon:

 - Rinse the salmon, put in a cooking dish covered in dark rum, and place in the fridge for 15 minutes

 - Make the brine, combining1.5 tbsp black pepper, 3/4 cup coarse sale, and 1.5 cups brown sugar

 - Pull salmon, cover in the brine all over, and place back in the fridge for 4 hours

 - Rinse of extra brine and put the salmon on the smoker at a temp of 200-225 degrees

 - When internal temp of the salmon his 140 degrees (after 1.5-2 hours), pull it off the smoker

 - Serve with cracker and cream cheese

Brisket & Ribs for ND/FSU Game

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:

Brisket:

- Rinse, trim, and rub the night before

- Put on the smoker at 225 degrees

- Leave on the smoker until the meat's temperature hits 195 degrees

- After sitting for 30 minutes, separate the point and the flat. Re-wrap the flat and put it in a cooler. Re-rub the point and put it back on the smoker for another 2-4 hours.

- Pull the point, let it sit for 30 minutes, then chop into 1in cubes and mix in a bowl with bbq sauce

- Slice the brisket flat

- Serve

Ribs:

- Clean, remove silver skin, and rub a bit before putting on the smoker

- Put on smoker at 225 degrees for 2.5 hours

- Pull off the smoker, wrap the ribs in foil along with some brown sugar and honey, and put back on smoker for 2 more hours

- Pull the ribs off the smoker and unwrap. Either serve with BBQ sauce on side, or put back on smoker and spread BBQ sauce on them to get hotter for 30 minutes or so, then serve

With all the hype surrounding the Notre Dame vs Florid State game last Saturday, I decided it called for a hyped up menu as well. For that, I opted to go with a double meat smoke for the first time - an 11lb brisket and 3 slabs of ribs! I had previously been successful cooking each meet separately, but had never done this much meat in one day. While there was plenty of down time throughout the day, there were also plenty of moments when I had a lot going on, and it proved to be quite the challenge to do all of that at once. But in the end, it was worth it. Here's my way too long recap of the day/process/recipe, with a speed read summary of the process at the bottom:

For starters, my lovely wife Kristen went to Costco on that Thursday to pick up all the meat for me. For those who don't know - and I certainly never would have guessed this - Costco has great quality meat. And, its the most affordable. Normally the cost difference between Costco and other stores' meat isn't anything worth the extra trip, but when buying a full packer brisket (both the flat and the point still connected, more on that later) which normally weighs 10-15lbs, Costco can be half the price of some of the other options. And they also sell nice St. Louis style spare ribs in 3-packs. So all in all, Costco was the perfect option for this smoke, but good to keep in mind in general for meat.

Here's the packer I was working with:

Full packer brisket

Close up of the label to see the weight: 11.29lbs!

So, definitely no shortage of meat. I don't have a picture of the ribs, but you are all more likely to have seen ribs before, rather than a full brisket, so you can imagine what they looked like.

Now the first steps that take place when smoking a brisket of this size typically occurs a day in advance of the actually smoking. In my case, I got to work on evening. The very first step involves taking the packer out of the packaging and rinsing off the meat. I simply do this by running it under some cold water and wiping it down with a paper towel afterwards. Easy enough.

Next comes the trimming. As you can see from the below pictures, the brisket has quite a bit of fat on it (everything that is white is fat):

This is the non-fatty side

This is the fatty-side

This is the fatty-side after I trimmed it. 

So from the first two pictures above, you can see both sides of the brisket. The top picture is the non-fatty side of the brisket (I think of it as the bottom since I always smoke with the fatty side up, which is a hotly debated topic in the bbq world). Despite not being that fatty, you can see some fat/white on the right side. Ultimately, I trimmed some of that off, but didn't really waste much time on it. 

Also, I'll point out that in that first picture, you can see a thicker part on the right side. This is because this is the "point" portion of the brisket, which sits right on top of the "flat" portion of the brisket (many stores sell just brisket flats, fyi). In fact, if you look closely at it, you can see a thick white fatty strip running through that thick side on the right. This is what separates/attaches the point and flat. Essentially, in that first picture, everything to the right of that white strip is the point. As you'll see later on, the point portion is what I use to make the burnt ends.

In the second picture, you are seeing the brisket from the fatty side. All of that white - pretty much the entire side - is a very thick layer of fat called the "fat cap". Some cooks don't bother trimming any of the fat since it melts during the smoke and adds some extra flavor to the meat. However, when it's that thick, it also prevents the rub from getting to the meat, so most choose to trim some of it. I fall in that latter camp, and typically look to trim it down to about 1/4th inch. You can see what the end result of my trimming was in the third picture. I went a bit deeper than planned at some points, where you can actually see the meat. Ideally, I'd have left a bit more fat on top, but it's not a big deal at all. I'm not sure I would ever be able to tell a difference, at least not yet. When all was said and done, I probably trimmed off about 2 or 3lbs of fat! 

One last comment on the point portion of the brisket. This particular brisket did not have a very large point for whatever reason, so you can't really see it in that third picture. But because it sits on top, usually you see more of a lump there on the right - that's the point, sitting on top of the flat. Ok, moving on.

The next step is to apply the rub. There are plenty of commercial rubs out there that are all supposedly great. Using them just makes the process easier. I didn't happen to have any that I wanted to use (although I did for the ribs as you'll see), so I used my own that I came up with previously. Essentially, it's a combo of salt, pepper, brown sugar, various spices, and a little cayenne pepper for heat. Anyway, I just use a shaker to spread rub all over every inch of the brisket, on all sides. At the end, it looks like this:

Rub applied all over the brisket

After spreading the rub all over, I wrap the rubbed up brisket tightly in cellophane and put it in the fridge. And with that, my Friday work was completed since I didn't need to do anything with the ribs until Saturday.

And then comes the true test of my commitment. Most briskets take anywhere from 1-1.25hrs/pound to smoke. And then, you have to leave 2-4 hours for the meat to rest and to cook the burnt ends. I was smoking a roughly 9lb brisket (recall I trimmed off 2-3lbs of fat), so I had to plan on this taking up to around 14-16 hours to cook and rest, all-in. Given this, and the fact that I wanted to have everything finished prior to the ND/FSU kickoff at 7pm Saturday night, and since it's always better to air on the side of the brisket being done too sone rather than too late, I decided to get it on the smoker at 4:30am! That also means I have to get up about 30 minutes earlier to get the smoker started, which is exactly what I did. 

So at 4am, I took the wrapped brisket out of the fridge to let it start warming up to room temperature. Some people insist on getting it all the way to room temperature before putting it on the smoker. Others don't bother because the cooler meat holds onto the smoke early on better. Given the convenience of it, I go with the latter opinion and don't really care about my brisket getting to room temp, but still pull it out a little early and unwrap it.

Now comes time to fire up my smoker. For the record, I use an 18in Weber Smokey Mountain. Not that I have anything else to compare it to, but I highly recommend this one for anyone looking to get into smoking. Its very easy to use, and it does a very good job of containing the heat so the smoke can last for a very long time at a consistent temperature - both key ingredients for good bbq.

Here are some pictures from my setup:

Unlit charcoal with some hickory and pecan wood chunks

Brisket placed on lower grate with temperature probe inserted

Smoker fully fired up!

The technique I use for long smoke sessions like what I did for the brisket is a popular one called "the minion method". Essentially, you create a ring of unlit charcoal, and then take a fire starter chimney full of lit charcoal, and put it right in the center of the ring. The idea is that the lit coals burn first, and slowly light the unlit charcoal ring throughout the day, so the fire keeps burning. Every time I've done this, this one included, it's allowed me to have good enough heat for about 12 hours. (update: see here for more detail about this technique).

At the beginning, I am working to get the smoker internal temperature to around 225 degrees. I usually am ok with it going up to 250 or so, but I don't like it to go above that point. And I definitely don't like it going much below 225. On the Weber Smokey Mountain, you control the temperature by adjusting the grates. When the grates are open, more air flows through the smoker and essentially stokes the fire, which keeps it hotter. So, if all the grates are open, the smoker will be at it's highest temperature. If all of them are closed, it will shut down. I find I always leave the top grate open and never change that, and instead just adjust the three grates on the bottom. Usually I can get the 225 degree temp by having one grate fully open and periodically alternating another grate between closed and half open. I usually keep the third grate closed throughout the entire cook. Once I get that consistent 225ish degree temperature, I put on the brisket on. This time around, I used the lower rack because I'm anticipating putting ribs on the upper rack later on in the day.

As for wood, I choose to place a few chunks in the unlit charcoal section (as seen in the picture above), and then I usually add another 3 pieces or so on top of the lit charcoal so it starts burning/smoking right away. Meat really only holds onto the smoke up to about 165 degrees or so internal meat temperature, so it's important to get as much smoke going as possible at the beginning. About an hour or so into the cook, I added a few more chunks of wood to keep the smoke flowing heavily. My wood choice for this cook was a mixture of hickory and pecan. I honestly don't know why, but that's just what I did. 

So, the smoker is around 225 degrees, the wood is smoking, the meat is on, and I have on temperature gauge measuring the meat's internal temperature, and one measuring the smoker's internal temperature. Yes, the smoker comes with a thermometer built in on the lid, but I like to have my own right down by the meat so I know more accurately what the smoker's temperature is. Anyway, at this point, now I just wait. The ultimate goal - which won't happen for a while - is for the meat's internal temperature to get to 195 degrees or so. The typical pattern is that the meat heats up towards 160 degrees or so pretty quickly, but then it stalls out at or around that temperature for a number of hours. This is why patience is the key to bbq - you just have to let it happen and wait.

As I was waiting, my focus began shifting to the ribs. My rib technique takes about 5 hours, so given I want to have everything done around 7pm, I decided to put the ribs on around 2pm. Therefore, about an hour prior to that, I start preparing them.

Preparing ribs for the smoker doesn't require that much work, especially compared to that of a brisket. The first step is rinsing them off when you take them out of the packaging, just like the brisket. Once again, I do this by putting them under some cold water and wiping them down with paper towels. Then, the one hard(ish) step, you have to remove the silver skin on the bottom of the ribs. You could leave the silver skin on and everything would be ok, but there would add a thin layer of toughness, so you might as well just get rid of it. It's not that easy to get off, but the technique I go with is I try to peel it back where I can, and then grip it with a paper towel (because it's so slippery) and just start pulling it off the ribs. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this so you just have to try to imagine it. Anyway, I just do the best I can and go from there (side note: if you get ribs from a butcher or the meat department at the grocery store, ask them to remove the silvers kin for you, if they haven't already - it's just easier this way).

Once the ribs are rinsed and the silver skin is removed, it's time to rub them up as well. Let's go to some pictures first:

Rinsed ribs ready for me to apply the rub

The ribs are cut in an equal rectangular shape - this is the "St. Louis" style cut

Apply the rub all over, and repping ND gear and a yankee apron to keep my ND shirt clean

All three slabs all rubbed up

The commercial rub I used on my ribs

As I said, other than removing the silver skin, this is really a very easy process. Unlike with my brisket, I decided to go with a commercial rub called Blues Hog. I'm a big fan of it because it has a great sweet taste that goes well with pork/ribs, but also has a little heat to it. It's a good combo, and I highly recommend it.

So now as I was approaching 2pm when I planned to put the ribs on, I got my day's curve ball (which is not uncommon while smoking - it can go differently every single time no matter how consistent your approach is). The typical "stall" period on my brisket, where the temperature usually hangs around 160-170 degrees, didn't last very long. And further, the brisket temp has kept increasing at a much faster than expected rate. So at 1:45pm, my brisket's internal temperature hits 196 degrees, after a little over 9 hours of smoking time. I was expecting it to be on the smoker for another 3 hours or so, but that's just not how it went this time. So, it is what it is, and it's time to pull it off the smoker.

First time I took the lid off to look at the nearly finished product

Pulling off the brisket

That's my brisket - no, it's not burnt (just smoked!)

While I was hoping to have the brisket stay on the smoker for a few more hours, just for the sake of my day's schedule, pulling smoked meat off earlier than expected is never a problem. The alternative would be pulling it off too late and having a bunch of hungry guests or a very late dinner. The plan all along was to let it rest for 2-4 hours wrapped in foil, and then wrapped in a beach towel, and placed in a cooler. That's the plan I stuck with, but since I knew I was going to have to let it sit for even longer than 4 hours, I put a few extra beach towels in the cooler to really keep it wrapped up - simple enough.

Now was when things started to get a tad more complicated, and required a bit more action on my end. I wanted to get the ribs on the smoker around 2pm. But after letting the brisket rest for about 30 minutes, I also need to separate the flat and the point to start making my burnt ends. So essentially, I had to do both things at the same time.

Since the ribs are all rubbed up and ready to go, and it's just a matter of throwing them on the smoker, I focused on the brisket first. At 2:10pm I pulled it out of the cooler and unwrapped it.

Separating the brisket's "flat" and "point"

Brisket "point"

It's pretty easy to separate the flat and the point. That large fat vein that runs between the two becomes extremely soft and tender while smoking, so as long as you know where it is at least roughly, it's easy to do. The top picture is me separating them with a knife, and the bottom picture is the point on it's own. Again, I am doing this so I can make burnt ends. Unfortunately, given the point on this brisket wasn't very large, I wasn't able to make a lot of burnt ends, but that's ok. The next step to making burnt ends is applying rub to the portion of the point that isn't covered with dark smoke. I also took the flat portion of the brisket, rewrapped it in foil and then a couple layers of towels and placed it back in the cooler. I also had a meat thermometer coming out of it, because I had to make sure the meat temp didn't drop below 140 degrees.

After doing this, the point goes back on the smoker for 2-4 hours. For me, this coincides with me putting the ribs on the smoker, as it is now 2:15pm. 

One slab of ribs and the point on the top rack

You can barely see the other two slabs sitting on the lower rack

Ultimately, the ribs are going to stay on the smoker longer than the point will, so I decided to put two of the slabs on the lower rack, and then put the third slab and the point on the top rack, as you can see in the pictures above. At this point, I don't bother measuring the internal temperature of the ribs (because it's hard to do with the bones getting in the way) or the point (because I don't really need to know), so I just have the temperature gauge telling me the temp of the smoker. 

Because I need more smoke once again, for both the ribs and the un-smoked side of the point, I decide to light a few new pieces of charcoal, and put them on the fire through the smoker's side door. I don't know that this was necessary given the smoker's temp was still right where I wanted it around 225 degrees, but I wanted there to be some very hot coals I could put some wood chunks on top of to really get the smoke going. So that was my strategy, and it worked well. And at this point, about 2:45pm, I'm back to the waiting game, for the most part. I do occasionally open up the smoker's lid to spritz the ribs with apple juice, which is just to keep them moist and make sure they don't dry out. I don't think its an imperative step, but it feels cool, so I go with it.

Finally 5:15pm hits and the ribs have been in the smoker for 2.5 hours. At this point, my ribs strategy includes pulling the ribs off the smoker just to wrap them in foil and then get them back on the smoker. One little extra step that I've added at this point, and think it really helps give my ribs an extra sweet taste that really compliments the meat well, is I lay brown sugar and honey on the foil and place the ribs on top of that. Then I put some more brown sugar and honey on top of the ribs, and then I wrap them up tightly in foil. This mixture then cooks inside the foil while on the smoker and gives the ribs a bit of a sweet glaze. So after doing that, the ribs go right back on the smoker in the same setup they were in before, as the point is still on there. And the temp is still around 225 degrees - no change on that (to the extent that I can control it) throughout the entire day, if you haven't noticed yet.

Then at 6:30, after having been on the smoker for another 4 hours, I decided to pull the point off the smoker. I wrap it in foil and a towel, and add it to the cooler with the rest of the brisket. Speaking of the rest of the brisket, the temp on the flat has now dropped to nearly 140 degrees. I do not want it to go below 140 degrees, so as much as I really did not want to do this, I had to take the flat out and put it in the over (wrapped in foil) at 170 degrees. This does not cook the brisket so it's not that big of a deal - it's just about keeping it warm. Again, it wasn't ideal or what I wanted to be doing, but given the brisket cooked so much quicker on this day, it's just the way it went.

At this point, we were getting to crunch time with the game starting shortly, and we also started having some friends show up. As a result, things here got a little rushed and I wasn't able to keep track of all my details or take any pictures of the process. So I'm going to fast forward to the end.

A bit after 7pm, I turned the over up to 225 degrees to really crank up the heat on the brisket flat so it's ready to be served. I also pulled the point out of the cooler and began finalizing the burnt ends. All this really entails is chopping the point up into 1in cubes, putting them all together in a bowl, and adding bbq sauce and mixing them all together. I used Cowtown BBQ sauce, which is Kansas City's own Oklahoma Joe's store brand. It goes so well with brisket, both the slices and burnt ends.

As I'm finishing up the burnt ends, I pulled the ribs off of the smoker. In total, they had been on there for about 4.5 hours - 2.5 hours unwrapped getting smoke, and 2 hours wrapped in foil. Normally at this point, I would have put them back on the smoker to "finish" them off, which would essentially mean letting them get some more heat as I spread BBQ sauce on them. However, given my timing and the game having started, I didn't want to be outside anymore, so I decided to just serve them as is and give people BBQ sauce to add as they felt they needed. One thing about my ribs, because of the technique I use of brown sugar and honey combined with the rub, the ribs already have a pretty great taste, to the point that they don't necessarily need any BBQ sauce. But, to each his own.

Lastly, I pulled the brisket flat out of the over and sliced it up. And with that, the brisket is sliced, the burnt ends are mixed with the bbq and ready to serve, and the ribs are cut. It's dinner time. 

Prior to cutting up the ribs

The burnt ends - I promise these are better tasting than they look!

Unfortunately, given how busy the finish became for this, I did a terrible job of taking pictures. As such the two above are the only pictures I have - I don't even have a picture of the sliced brisket! The ribs there look good, and they were. The burnt ends there do not look so good, but I assure you, they were. Generally, burnt ends are my favorite part of brisket when done right.

And that's that - dinner was served. The brisket slices were the worst part of the meal this time, and I think that was largely because of how early I had to pull it off the smoker and then having to use the oven to reheat. But it was still good, especially in sandwich form. The ribs and burnt ends were great. And we watched a great football game, with a not so great ending, but I digress.

SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:

Brisket:

- Rinse, trim, and rub the night before

- Put on the smoker at 225 degrees

- Leave on the smoker until the meat's temperature hits 195 degrees

- After sitting for 30 minutes, separate the point and the flat. Re-wrap the flat and put it in a cooler. Re-rub the point and put it back on the smoker for another 2-4 hours.

- Pull the point, let it sit for 30 minutes, then chop into 1in cubes and mix in a bowl with bbq sauce

- Slice the brisket flat

- Serve

Ribs:

- Clean, remove silver skin, and rub a bit before putting on the smoker

- Put on smoker at 225 degrees for 2.5 hours

- Pull off the smoker, wrap the ribs in foil along with some brown sugar and honey, and put back on smoker for 2 more hours

- Pull the ribs off the smoker and unwrap. Either serve with BBQ sauce on side, or put back on smoker and spread BBQ sauce on them to get hotter for 30 minutes or so, then serve