A grill skillet can come in handy if, for example, you want to grill small
items, such as sliced vegetables. Also in situations such as the one I
described, when you need just a little bit of insulation from the full force of
the fire. Chicken skin can burn very easily if you're not careful. The extra
metal thickness from the skillet helps a lot here.
Another handy situation is if you're not comfortable cooking on a grate. The
ksillet or grill pan gives you a nice bounded area in which to work, and you
don't have to worry about dropping food through the grate. I sometimes use a
grill skillet for grilling hamburgers and hotdogs. You get all the benefits of
the grill experience and a skillet at the same time.
An offset smoker is a device in which the firebox and cooking chamber are
separte from each other. The firebox is off to one side (offset), and the
cooking chamber is either a vertical or horrizontal box to the other side. This
design makes it very easy to restock the fire; you just open the firebox lid
and add your charcoal and wood. No need to open the cooking chamber much,
unless it is to flip and reposition your meat or refill the water pan.
Granted, the offset smoker is not the most efficient type of smoker. The metal
in them is often thin and it radiates a lot of heat, which means lost energy,
which further means you have to restock the firebox every hour or so. I
compensated for this by installing fireproof bricks in both the fire box and
cooking chamber, which helsp trap in the heat. What I would really like to get
is one of those big green egg ceramic style smokers. With those, the charcoal
can burn up to seven hours without restocking.
However, they have their own drawbacks. If they get wet, the ceramic can
shatter when heat is applied. Also, do to the efficient nature of the units,
you have to open the lid in stages. If you let in a bunch of air all at once,
you can get a massive flare up. I do not currently have a garage to store the
thing in, and covering it up with a tarp won't stop all the rain from hitting
it. So, getting a BGE will have to wait until I have a place to store it
indoors.
For ribs, I usually get the St Louis style spare ribs, which is the nicely
trimmed cut. These are easier to slice and present. Also, it's more commonly
available here, than the full, untrimmed racks. I also get baby back ribs on
occasion, when there's a sale. But getting those can be tricky; often they're
trimmed too close and they are not very meaty.
For cooking them, I adhere to the keep it simple stupid philosophy. The very
easiest thing to do is rinse them under cold water, apply vinegar to both sides
of the racks and rinse again. Then pat dry. Apply a thin layer of mustard to
both sides, and then use a very simple rub of kosher salt and black pepper. You
can fancy it up by adding things such as garlic and/or onion powder, chili
powder and/or paprika, different pepper blends, indian spices, or five spice
powder. Apply a nice thick coat of whatever rub, and then place meat side down
on the grate.
Actually, I have rib bracks in my smoker. These are two racks that go from side
to side and can hold four racks of ribs, standing upright. Place them all meat
side facing the fire. After an hour, rotate and flip out the location of each
rack so that they all get equal fire time. Flip and rotate, rotate and flip,
every hour.
After about five hours (this is for my own cooker; times may very for each
grill/smoker and cut of ribs depending on a great many factors) I put them so
that the meat side is now facing away from the fire. So then all I have to do
is rotate each rack instead of flipping them. The ribs are done when you can
grab a rack about a third from the end and flex it. When the rack feels like
it's going to break, it's done. You can feel the meat has pulled back from the
ends of the bones.
I never apply barbecue sauce to my ribs; that's always served separately. Nor
do I use mops or anything like that. Sometimes I will use a wash after about
four hours, consisting of apple or cranberry juice, olive oil, and a little of
the rub I use on them rib racks. This mixxutre is placed in a squeeze bottle
and spritzed on the ribs to refresh the flavor.
Hope that all helps a little.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Rawlings" <twosocks76@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blindcooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2017 16:52:23 -0700
Subject: [blindcooks] Re: About lighting charcoal
I have never heard of a grill skillet before. It seems at once kind of cool
and wholey unnecessary, but I'm not sure on what side I come down. I've
also never heard of an offset smoker before, so I'll have to check out what
it is and how it works. So let me segway a little and ask you, when you get
the craving for some barbecued ribs, done outdoors, how do you make them?
What cut of ribs do you prefer and why? I would love to hear a rundown of
exactly how you make yours, assuming you have a master recipe or method for
making them.
Jon
