British BBQ Society Forums

Somebody asked me in my introduction thread to do a journal of my first smoke, so I thought I'd get it started early, and update it throughout the week.

Planning on cooking for ten odd people on Friday, having got my WSM on Friday just gone. I'll be doing a pork shoulder, brisket and ribs. So........

Today I did a couple of things

- tested in house thermometer with boiling water, and it was bang on 100 degrees which was nice

- got the WSM outside, and its currently doing a dry run to get some coating on the inside. Used the minion method and put in a ton of JackDaniels wood chips to get some nice sour mash flavours coating the inside

- went to my selected butchers and it had closed at 1pm this afternoon ! Panicking, I went to the other main one near me and tried to order a 2-3 kg bone in pork shoulder, 4-5kg brisket, and four racks of baby back ribs ( I tried to see if they could leave more meat on top of the baby backs, 1/2 inch I asked for but no luck ). What I'm now getting is.......

3kg pork shoulder with bone out. Hopefully there isn't too much importance in the bone being out ?

Two 2kg briskets instead of one 4kg one. I'll cook these side by side. Any ideas what this'll do to the cook time ?

Ribs is where the conversation got a bit confusing. I'm, now getting two racks of baby backs and one rack of spareribs with a nice layer of pork belly meat still attached on to it. Does that sound right ? It didn't to me but he seemed adamant that it would be a good idea !

Sounds like it'll be a feast! Good luck with it all, have you got yourself some good thermometers? It's made my life so much easier having the Thermapen and the Maverick ET73.

I just did my first ribs at the weekend and by the sounds of it I got something similar to yours with the belly meat attached to it. Turned out beautifully, plenty of meat and really nice and tender. The baby backs/spareribs they had in my butcher looked so pathetic I went with the belly ones. Hope yours are a little better.

Have you seen the Harry Soo guide to getting your smoker seasoned? I think it's on here somewhere.

Good luck!

Ah good news on the ribs, I really was confused by that ! Glad they turned out well for you ! Ordered the Maverick and Thermapen today from Amazon, and I read the seasoning guide somewhere on here a couple of days back, so I plan on doing another dry run with some bacon etc in it to get a bit of fat going.

I'm using AmazingRibs.com recipes

Not sure how bacon would do, doubtless other have done it but traditionally bacon is cold smoked, if given a choice try and go for a collar joint or a whole piece of streaky rather than back bacon.

Thanks for the tip. Got a couple of queries for the more experienced ones on here ......

I'm going to have a 3kg (6.5lbs) pork shoulder on the top rack, and two 2kg (4.5 lbs each) briskets on the bottom. What will this do to cooking times ? My guests are coming over around 7.30pm Friday night, so I want the shoulder and briskets to be done around 5pm ish so I can wrap and cool box them for a couple of hours.

I know brisket is approx an hour a pound, and I intended on having a 10 lbs pound brisket which would've taken 10-12 hours. Having two smaller briskets must surely reduce each of their cooking times, but then again, having all that meat including the pork shoulder must counteract this ?

Either way I'm thinking of leaving myself about 12+ hours and starting the smoke around 4am.

Also, how do you organise the wood if you have two different things at the same time ? Ideally, I would've started the brisket first, smoked it with the pecan wood, then when I Texas crutch in tinfoil it at 150F, put the pork shoulder in and begin smoking it with the cherry wood. The foil would protect the brisket from being oversmoked. Now, I'm thinking the pork shoulder should be started at the same time, or even before the two briskets, meaning that I am now confused as to how to use to different types of wood to smoke two different meats without over smoking them !

Bit of a ramble there sorry.

Today, my Maverick thermometer arrived, I made my Carolina BBQ sauce, my Kansas BBQ sauce and made my Memphis Dust and Big Bad Beef Rub !