Smokin in ND

[tmheagle]

Just bought my first Bradley smoker yesterday. Have been battling over charcoal or electric smoker for a few days leading up to Super Bowl and finally broke down. With the constant winds we have had this week I was dreading the attempt at doing any BBQ this weekend. Now that I have purchased a Bradley, this will help tremendously in monitoring the temp and keeping it constant.


Little about me; I am 23, graduated with Bachelors in Dec, married in Sept, and have been grilling for too long. Dad and I have been working on getting some type of formula down for smoking, but haven't found it yet. Any tips you can give would be greatly appreciated. We are doing 3 racks of ribs today to test out what we have learned.

[KyNola]

Welcome to the forum!  The wind is the biggest enemy of the Bradley.  See if you can develop a wind break to prevent the wind from blowing straight over the top of your Bradley.  The wind blowing over the vent will suck the heat right out of the tower.  Don't close the vent thinking this will fix the problem.  That causes a whole different issue.  Keep the vent open.

[GusRobin]

welcome
Here is a link to the forum recipe site:

http://www.susanminor.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?180-Our-Time-Tested-and-Proven-Recipes

Couple tips:
Wind will effect your smokers ability to maintain temp, so try to shield it as much as you can
Keep the vent open (seems counter intuitive, but trust me)
Put very hot water in the water bowl
pre-heat the smoker as the temp will drop when you put in the meat.

My method of doing ribs (derived from various posts by different forum members:

Spare ribs:
remove membrane on back of ribs
apply favorite rub
pre-heat smoker to 250*
Put in ribs, meat side down and smoke for 1 hr
After an hr, flip the ribs, spritz with liquid of choice (apple cider, juice, beer, etc) to meat side up and smoke for 2 more hrs
after a total of 3 hrs, pull ribs
put on sheet of foil - drizzle with honey, sprinkle with brown sugar, and put 1 tbs of butter. Wrap in a second sheet of foil
(when you foil, do it so that you can put the ribs in meat side down with any liquid dripping out)hours
Put in smoker meat side down, for 2 hours
Pull, open foil. Be careful juice is hot. Empty juice in a container. Mop ribs with the juice and if you want your favorite BBQ sauce.
Put back in smoker unfoiled and cook for another hr
This is referred to as the 3-2-1 method. For baby backs I do a 2.5-2-1

Hope this helps