Bradley OS - Short Ribs

[jonnyp]

Greetings everyone,
Long time since I've been here but I just finally bought my first Bradley OS.
I did my first smoke last week and put it to the test with Chicken wings, Pork loin, vegetables, and some Russet whole potatoes.
The wings & vegetables came out awesome, however the recommended temp for the pork recipe was 250 degrees.
With all of my might I could not get that thing past 225. The pork finally finished, but the potatoes were still hard. We didn't get to eat until late that night.

I want to do some Beef Short Ribs tomorrow, and have been reading several recipe & cooking ideas and they all say 250 degrees.
With a smoker that appears to not get that high I'm looking for some recommendations so I can plan my time accordingly.

[Wildcat]

220 F should be plenty for ribs. Will probably take 5 or 6 hours for a rack. Bradley is a low and slow smoker. Not designed for high heat or fast cooking. If you want more heat try a pellet grill.

[Roget]

You might be lucky to get the Bradley to a consistant 250 degrees.
One thing you can do is start a bit earlier and then hold the food if it hits your target IT early.
I usually cook at approx. 225-235 for most smokes.
To me anything cooked at 250 will be just as good (or better) cooked a little longer at 225.
Once you get use to what you can expect as far as cabinet temps, you will be able to adjust the time on any recipe to put out some fantistic grub.
I think the whole idea of the Bradley is to cook it "low & slow".

[tskeeter]

Jonny, I suspect that the reason you couldn't get your smoker up to 250 was the large amount of food it looks like you put in the smoker.  And that quite a bit of the food might have been cold.

Here are some tips that might help.

I know this is real simplistic, but, keep your smoker door closed.  It takes a long time for the smoker temp to recover every time you open the door.  So avoid opening the door as much as possible.  There is a great Smokehouse Hero saying.  "If you're lookin, you ain't cookin."

More simplistic.  Preheat your smoker.  I usually preheat for a half hour.  I preheat to a temp that is higher than my smoking/cooking temp.  Then I reduce the heat when I put the food in the smoker.

Avoid taking food from the fridge directly to the smoker.  I usually let food sit on the counter for about an hour to take the chill off before I put it in the smoker.  Every degree the food warms up is a degree the smoker doesn't have to heat it.

Wrap a common brick in foil and tuck the brick under the feed tray for the puck burner.  The brick acts as a heat sink, helping with heat recovery when you open the door or load the smoker with food.  I have used as many as four heat sink bricks when I had to put a not quite defrosted turkey breast into the smoker.  In that case, I preheated the bricks in the house and moved them to the smoker.

Use hot water in your puck bowl.  As close to boiling as you can get.  Your smoker has limited heating capacity and water can absorb a lot of heat.  Why use the limited heating capacity heating water instead of cooking your food?

Make sure the vent damper is open.  Half way is a good starting point.  Three quarters open for high moisture foods, such as poultry.  This seems counterintuitive, but keeping the damper close to closed doesn't keep heat in the smoker.  It traps moisture in the smoker cabinet.  Moisture that absorbs heat.  The damper needs to be open enough to allow the moisture to vent.

Protect the vent on your smoker from wind.  Wind seems to just suck the heat out of Bradleys.  Smoking in a place that is sheltered from wind helps tremendously.  If you must smoke exposed to the wind, cobble together something to shelter the vent from the wind.

Didn't want to make this insultingly simple, but wanted to cover all the bases I could think of.  Hopefully some of this is helpful.