Starting my first smoke

[DevinM]

I just turned on my smoker for the first time and I'm doing some ribs, I will show pictures later. I am also following the pinned post above, but I do have some questions about that.

Firstly he says he likes the temp to be 225, well as far as I can tell the temp can go 220 or 230.
On top of that you get heat from both sources, do I just set the puck pusher to max and the oven to the temp I want?

[DevinM]

Well ribs are in the smoker, should I have got the smoke going before I put them in? I put the ribs in then turned the wood on. I suspect it will be fine I guess just maybe not ideal?

[beefmann]

welcome aboard,

have your top vent open, wide open,. your water bowl 3/4 full and under the puck burner, no more then 3 hours of smoke on ribs, cook at 225 F give or take, and yes your  box temp will vary this is normal. after the smoking process wrap your ribs in foil , add in several  ounces of apple juice or other flavored juice  and wrap the ends  closed,,, cook for another 1 to 3 hours depending on how many ribs ( 1 rack do 1 hour ) pulls back out of  smoker and apply your favorite bbq sauce place just the  ribe  back in the  smoker with out the foil and let the bbq sauce caramelize.

enjoy

[DevinM]

Sorry but how do I make the temp 225? it seems to only go by 10 I have it at 230.

[beefmann]

Sorry but how do I make the temp 225? it seems to only go by 10 I have it at 230.

leave it at 230, it  will be close enough, plus your temps will vary a bit , also have all your  ribs on the top racks as much as possable

[DevinM]

1 thing I'm noticing is while the pucks seem to be moving, I'm not smelling any hickory smoke, when I stick my nose over the vent I really just smell the rub I have on the ribs, and there is no smoke coming out. The temp is where it needs to be so maybe when I turned the smoke on as I added the meat it just takes some time to get going? or should the smoke be more visible and I have an issue?

[DevinM]

smoke has started

[DevinM]

Well got an hour of smoke in and I had to turn the smoke off, sadly I'm in an apartment and there was just too much smoke to have pumping out on my deck. So I'll just let it cook the next 2 hours and then continue from there.

[DevinM]

Thanks for the help Beefmann

[DevinM]

where I had to stop smoking early should I wrap it and add juice early as well?

[Habanero Smoker]

Hi;

Welcome to the forum.

Since this is your first time, try to follow the 3-2-1 method as stated, so cook for the full 3 hours before wrapping in foil. In stead of apple juice add about 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and about 3 pad of butter on the foil. Place the ribs meat side down on the brown sugar and butter, and then repeat the brown sugar and butter on the other side of the ribs prior to sealing the foil.

[DevinM]

seems some of my photos were too big for imageshack but I will say this, these ribs were like eating pork Belly. Dropping with juices silky and delicious I think next time I will up the temp a little, it was smoking at 210-220 most of the time so I think when it is colder and only going to get colder I will try the oven part at 240 and see where the temp sticks.

However it was super good I actually wouldn't mind it being cooked a little longer, I think that had more to do with the temp being 10ish degree's under but the temp on the pork was good.

[NorthShoreMN]

welcome from Minnesota

[ragweed]

Glad to hear of your success.  Now the fun starts, tweaking things until you get them just right.  BTW, welcome to the forum from Nebraska.

[Saber 4]

Welcome from Texas