Smokin' in the New Year

Good hello again…

Happy new year to you all. All the best to you in 2005. Sorry to have been away so long.



At the stroke of midnight I was standing in front of the Smokin’ Pro smokin’ away with my wife and my brother. The weather was mild, though windy and cool. We had a chicken in the smoker that I had injected and marinated w/ Paul Kirk’s Italian Dressing Marinade from Championship Barbecue Sauces. The recipe was super easy to put together and it is delicious. Highly recommended. It is basically wine vinegar, sugar, some herbs, some oil and salt and pepper and spices. Not much else to that. The bird marinated about 2 hours and then into the smoker over oak, hickory and apple. We used mainly Kingsford this time because lump charcoal is scarce around us this time of year.

When we finished, we closed the inlet on the smoker and went to bed. We had some baby backs, spares, and brisket planned for the next day. When I got up to get started (9 hours later) the fire in the basket was still around 125 degrees. Hiroshi scooped out the ashes, split some sticks into kindling and started building the temperature back up. We usually use a mustard slather on our ribs, but this time, we decided to try something different. On the baby backs, I just put the rub on, and on the spares, I used the slather. We wanted to see if we got different color or bark on the ribs. We also did no mopping on anything we cooked that weekend.

Ultimately, there wasn’t that much difference. The bark on the baby backs had a little more crunch, but not much. The color was still the deep red we’ve been getting. We’ll have to experiment more. They were the best ribs we’ve ever cooked, though. We used some maple mixed in with the oak and hickory—sweet, mild, and deep smoky flavor. Cooked the ribs about 6 hours and then let them rest at about 200 in the oven and squirted them with just a little honey. They were dribble down the chin juicy. Once again, we closed down the inlet, and went to bed.

The next day was salmon and kielbasa. Same deal, we just stoked up the fire with what was left of yesterday’s burn and got down to business. We got something like 30+ hours without having to start a fire from a cold start. Nice. I wish there was always a coal bed in the smoker. An eternal bbq fire.