Birthday Celebration

Birthday

I had a great birthday. I took the day off: slept in, bought a remote control for my new grill. I met Jeff at Busters for lunch. One of my goals is to make brisket as well as they do. Then I went to the bowling alley to work on my release. I've had a horrible couple of weeks bowling and my release point was completely messed up. I did pretty well; hopefully I can take that success to next Monday. Then a walk in the late afternoon.

Jeff came over for dinner:  Guactacs and cake! Then I got to open my present; a fantastic apron to go with the grill!

Here's a close-up so you can read it.

Weekend birthday weekend in Portland

Carla and I went to downtown Portland for the weekend. We went to Jimmy Mak's to see Linda Hornbuckle. Fantastic. We are going back on March 15 to see Lloyd Jones, a local blues band.

We also walked all over (of course). Got a couple of pictures at Union Station. And saw a cairn that made us think of our nephew Fran Camosse

And a train coming across the Steel Bridge

BBQ Short Ribs February 12-13 2011 - Part 2

I've got the ribs on the smoker and I'm using a user program for the first time. If I set it up right I'll get

• 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours
• Down to "Smoke"for an hour
• Back up to 250 until the meat probe in one of the ribs reaches 180 degrees

After 2 hours at 250 degrees

The rib with the probe was up to 154 degrees when the temp was at 250. Once the smoker went down to "smoke" (about 170 - 180) the probe dipped to 149, then 141. 

After 2 1/2 hours at 250 and 1 hour on "smoke"

I imagine the probe temp will start to rise again.
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I checked again at 3:20; the biggest rib with the probe was at 167 but the others were at 180 or above so I took the finished ones off:

Wrapped in foil; they got done sooner than I expected. They'll have to wait 'til Jeff gets here for dinner.

That bit on the lower left was actually a piece of meat that came off the biggest rib, which was a dinner in itself. It didn't have any fat in it and ended up way too tough; kind of like I expect my first brisket will taste like :(

The last big rib wasn't finished until 4:45.

Dinner is served

One of the better ribs; nice smoke ring.

The smaller pieces were good; the very lean pieces were too tough. I liked the rub. I think a do-over but I'll need to make sure that the ribs are similar in size. The Pellet Boss did not turn off automatically which is something I'll have to figure out.

BBQ Short Ribs February 12-13 2011

Time to bust out the Mak 2 Star General again. Last weekend would have been perfect but we got to busy. I hope it doesn't rain too much while they cook on Sunday.

So far I've cooked steak, baby back ribs, and St. Louis cut ribs on my MAK and my loaner last summer. On the pelletsmoking.com web forum I'm a member of there are lots of good recipes. Someone did some beef ribs a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't really considered doing beef ribs until I saw Cowgirl's entry. That was the inspiration, but these will be a bit different

• She coated hers with bacon drippings before putting on the rub. I didn't have bacon drippings so I used good ol' vegetable oil
• She used big beef rib racks. I've wanted to do something with short ribs for a long time, so I went that direction.
• No sauce for me

It's a 2 day process; one day for the rub and one day for the cooking. I picked up 4 1/2 lbs of  ribs at New Season's; they look fantastic just as they are

Made a rub based on Craig "Meathead"Goldwyn's Big Bad Beef Rub at amazingribs.com. This rub is light on sugar and is heavy on salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder. To get a nice fine rub I pushed it through a fine wire mesh strainer. I applied the rub, wrapped 'em up and put them in the garage refrigerator overnight.

Tomorrow after church I'll fire up the smoker. Here's the plan

• 2 1/2 hours at 250 degrees
• 60 minutes on "smoke"
• Back to 250 until they hit 180 internal temp