My first long smokes with pellets

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sptucker

New member
My first long smokes on the MAK. Still plenty of room for tweaking, but we were all happy with the amount of smoke in both cases. Plenty of smoke ring visible, in any case, so my skepticism regarding smoke capability has been assuaged.

Very happy!

Pork shoulder:

Brisket:


Brisket plated with seared brussels sprouts, broiled cauliflower and homebrewed kolsch:
 
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So Cal Smoker

New member
Very nice first pellet cook sptucker, it looks delicious. I can tell by your signature this is not your first rodeo. Cooking is cooking, just different heat sources and sptucker can cook. Good luck and good smoking.

Bill
 
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sptucker

New member
So Cal Smoker said:
Very nice first pellet cook sptucker, it looks delicious. I can tell by your signature this is not your first rodeo. Cooking is cooking, just different heat sources and sptucker can cook. Good luck and good smoking.

Bill
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Thanks Bill. I agree, it's another way of doing things and the laws of thermodynamics remain the same, just got to adjust the processes!

I'm having a blast cooking with the MAK, so far no problems adapting.

Oh, and please call me Paul.

Paul
 
scooter

scooter

Moderator
Great cook Paul. I love traditional BBQ meat with non traditional sides. Just works great and nothing goes better with BBQ than cold beer!!! :)
 
S

sptucker

New member
mcschlotz said:
Looks excellent Paul. Care to share settings, times & pellet choice for these two?
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Happy to share!

I used B&B Hickory pellets I bought at Academy while in my hometown for Xmas. I believe these are re-branded BBQers Delight pellets.

For the pork test run, I used a smallish (6lb) well-marbled bone-in shoulder. I put it in the middle of the bottom rack with no temp probe and set the Pellet Boss to SMOKE. I let this run for 4 hours, then stuck a probe in it and upped the PB to 225 and set a probe alarm for 195. My reason for running it on SMOKE for so long was mainly due to comments about not enough smoke from pellets. I normally wrap in foil when the color is right, but I just let this go without wrapping to see what would happen. At 195, I took it off the grill and let it rest in a pyrex dish on my kitchen counter for maybe 15 minutes. The bone came out clean and the meat pulled easily with 2 forks. The entire cook was about 9.5 hours.

Here's what it looked like when I pulled the bone out. Wonderful bark evident...



If nothing else, this cook proved to me that the MAK makes plenty of smoke in the SMOKE mode and there is absolutely no reason to augment it unless you want to cook at higher temps for less time. Just my opinion...


The brisket was a fairly lean flat about 2" thick at it's thickest. Not the best choice, but it's what I decided to use for this experiment. I put the brisket in the middle of the top rack with a small pan of water on the bottom rack since it was so lean. I had just installed my MAK Wifi and I wanted to experiment with the Cooking Program capability, and the program looked like this:
1) SMOKE 2 hours
2) 225 for 2 hours
3) 225 until Probe 1 = 145 (at this point, I wrapped it in foil)
4) 250 until Probe 1 = 195
5) 250 for 2 hours
I realize there are some extra steps in there, but I wanted to see what MAK Grills Mobile would do. It's pretty freaking cool as it sends you a text when a step is completed. It minimized the amount of time I spent going out into the deep freeze for sure and I plan to use it a lot.
Anyway, I pulled the meat off at Probe 1 = 203, step 4 was just to get me to pay attention towards the end. Vented, rewrapped, and let it rest in a pyrex dish for about 30 minutes and sliced! The entire cook was just under 9 hours.

Happy with both cooks, but always room for improvement!
 
S

sptucker

New member
scooter said:
Great cook Paul. I love traditional BBQ meat with non traditional sides. Just works great and nothing goes better with BBQ than cold beer!!! :)
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I agree 100%. Plus, it was stupidly cold and snowy this day and I didn't want to venture out for beans or slaw fixins, etc. Sprouts and cauli offset any evil the meat does, too. ;-)

Thanks everyone for your kind words!
 
TrickyDick

TrickyDick

New member
Looks awesome! And the meat looks good too! Nice to welcome a fellow homebrewer on board. Nice smoke ring on the brisket. Did you say if you used a pan for the brisket or not, other than the water pan below.?

TD
 
S

sptucker

New member
TrickyDick said:
Looks awesome! And the meat looks good too! Nice to welcome a fellow homebrewer on board. Nice smoke ring on the brisket. Did you say if you used a pan for the brisket or not, other than the water pan below.?

TD
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No pan. Directly on the upper rack, fat side down in this case...
 
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