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smoking BBQ Food Photos

ZanderSpice

ZanderSpice

Up until I moved to a house with a decent yard, I was terrible at grilling but a decent cook otherwise. I moved to a nice big place in January and went shopping for a grill. I picked up a very cheap used propane grill first (more for the tank), then I found a nice used Weber Genesis Silver B and started grilling almost every day. I was doing burgers, brats, steaks, beer can chicken, veggies, corn and my favorite, ribs. I would slow cook the ribs on the gas grill and was getting very nice results. I always kept my eye out for a good deal and started looking at the Weber Performer. A nice almost new one showed up and I grabbed it. I think it is everything I could ever want. I've had it two weeks and cooked an huge amount of food including 6 racks of ribs over the 4th of July weekend. Anyway, I didn't want to throw these pictures in my pepper growing thread so here they are. Anyone else want to show off their food, please feel free to put them here too. I'll stop by every once in a while when I have something that looks and tastes great. I'll probably be trying to get a good tri-tip done pretty soon.

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Nice bark but no smoke ring. Why do I see coals and no wood? Don't tell me you "smoked" w/o wood.
 
Thanks JayT! They were very popular, even with some who usually stay away from cue.

THP, I didn't get any pics of Monday's ribs with a better ring, they were gone as soon as they hit the table. The sliced pic is from Saturday when I used just a little bit of hickory. Monday's used a lot more hickory. I added the second batch of chips right after taking that middle pic with the rib rack. Believe me, everything on the 4th, even the corn, was nice and smokey from the wood.

edit: Thanks SuperHot! I'm still learning the ways and improving each time.
 
I love doing BBQ on my weber kettle.

From a cost standpoint, I recently "Downgraded" to the weber charcoal (on purpose...I still have my nice propane grill but I never use it anymore). I love it. I've had amazing results too.

Do you find that filling both sides with coals like in the ribs pic gets too hot?

I bought an oven thermometer to help regulate.
I like to keep it around 225-250 in there. I only need about 12-15 coals to get that. I just throw them off to one side and put the meat over the drip pan with water.
 
Thank, LGHT. Coming from a CBJ, that means a lot.

Frydad4, I haven't smoked on my kettle in a long time, but I never had a problem overheating with coals on both sides. But I used those Weber coal baskets, which don't really hold much to begin with. And since it was a one-touch with the sweeper-slider bottom vent covers that corroded and disinergrated long ago, I run it wide open.
 
midwestchilehead said:
Thank, LGHT. Coming from a CBJ, that means a lot.

Frydad4, I haven't smoked on my kettle in a long time, but I never had a problem overheating with coals on both sides. But I used those Weber coal baskets, which don't really hold much to begin with. And since it was a one-touch with the sweeper-slider bottom vent covers that corroded and disinergrated long ago, I run it wide open.
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Oh man, good brisket is really hard to find here and all you BBQ is great looking.

No problem with the heat for me either. I also use the baskets, and I don't worry about having it a little hotter than 250. I have an infrared thermometer that I should be using to really get it dialed in, but I probably wouldn't want to extend the time much by going to a lower temp.
 
Thanks Zander. I've been smoking for a while, and thinking back over the years, the best brisket I have ever done was on my Weber kettle. And I can't find the damn recipe I used. I know its around here somewhere . . . .

For ease of use, you can't beat the WSM. It is really set it and forget it for six hours or so. But smoking on the kettle is fun because you are much more involved - at least every hour and a half or so. Love my kettles, but I love all my other smokers too.
 
It's been a while since I had some fall off the bone ribs, so I tried baby backs braised with beer, butter and onion. I used my standard rub and smoke with some hickory, but I still need some work to produce a more visible smoke ring. After I'm done with this wood, I'll try apple. They were tasty, but the same recipe next time will have less salt in the rub. I'll probably go back to spares too.

Halfway through. I cooked a little hot, but there was no unpleasant char taste.

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All done. Pulled apart so easy.

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Edit: I should explain a bit more. After I finished the smoking portion I wrapped them up meat side down in foil with the beer, butter and onion slices until finished.
 
Some more photos. Spareribs were on sale and luckily they were trimmed up pretty tight. I changed two things and got the best smoke yet. First, I used less rub and second I did it the night before. My guess is that they both allowed the smoke to penetrate better. I'll try less rub but only an hour before and see how that goes. Again, I did a beer, butter and onion step and it really made them extra tender. These might have been the best ever. I also finished of my hickory and will be trying apple next.

0 hours:
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1.5 hours, gave it a bit of a basting with 7up retro (sugar based):
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3 hours:
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then wrapped it up meat side down for another ~2 hours:
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Excellent looking boxes man! I've recently made the jump from CBJ to cook- what a reality check that is! I'm still judging some, but I find I'm a lot more, um, judgmental about entries since I've been cooking. Being new to cooking and broke, we do all of our competition meats in a single WSM. We manage to fit a brisket, two pork shoulders, a dozen chicken thighs, and 3 slabs in it! I think we do pretty good, but we're in central Missouri, every one and their dog has a friggin competition team, so the competition is stiff!!
 
Thanks Emu. I am assuming you were referring to the boxes I posted. I cooked in comps for a few years, then decided to go to judging school. It really helped me learn what judges are looking for, and taught me to tone down the heat and amp up the flavor on my entries. I don't like my comp Q as much as the stuff I make for myself, but it certaianly scores better. I am fortunate to have a large offset that has plenty of room for comp meats, but I really like my WSM and it may start traveling with me too. With gas and meat prices skyrocketing, I find myself doing more judging than cooking, but hope to compete more as time and $$ allow. I know what you mean about the stiff competition. The entries you saw above only scored in the middle of the pack in a 60-team competition. You can't swing a dead cat around by the tail around here without hitting another comp team.

Emu said:
Excellent looking boxes man! I've recently made the jump from CBJ to cook- what a reality check that is! I'm still judging some, but I find I'm a lot more, um, judgmental about entries since I've been cooking. Being new to cooking and broke, we do all of our competition meats in a single WSM. We manage to fit a brisket, two pork shoulders, a dozen chicken thighs, and 3 slabs in it! I think we do pretty good, but we're in central Missouri, every one and their dog has a friggin competition team, so the competition is stiff!!
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Are you still cooking competitions? My family and I are judging the American Royal Invitational and cooking the Open. We're pretty excited. We've heard that the party in the parking lot is pretty intense- sounds like my kind of party!!
 
Sporadically. I was going to enter two this year and all my help petered out on me, so I ended up not entering any. I just got my judging letter for the invitational, and I will be judging the open as well, so maybe I will run into you on invitational judging day (but I won't be able to fraternize with you on turn-in day for the open!) I've been to the Royal several times, but never made it to the Friday night party. Maybe this year . . . .
 
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