6/17/2017 – First beef short ribs smoked and they turned out great. Great piece of meat from B&W, only salt and pepper for seasoning then 9 hours of smoke in the MES on Father’s Day.
Yesterday we bought a 4.68 lb. “Beef Short Ribs, Heavy Beef” at B&W Meat Market for $5.29/lb. It did not need anything trimmed. Seasoned with fresh black pepper and Kosher salt. Beautiful piece of meat.
Ambient temp is in the high 80s with 69% humidity.
8:15 AM – Put in the MES that has pre-heated to 225, overshot then cooled when opened to insert the meat and the smoking Amazen tray with Trafalgar hickory pellets. Chip loader is pulled out about 1″.
9:00 – MES is reading 220 and heating while the grate temp at the meat is 245.
10:30 – MES is reading 235 and grate temp is 245. Lowered MES Set point to 215. Pushed in chip loader to only about 1/4″ gap.
12:30 PM – MES is reading 228 and the grate temp at the meat is 219. Still steady thin blue smoke.
2:00 – MES is reading 228 and heating while the grate temp at the meat is 227. Still steady thin blue smoke.
4:30 – MES timed out and shut off for maybe 30 minutes. Temp fell to 180s but came back quickly. At this time the MES is reading 239 and is off while the grate temp is 275. Inserted the meat probe and IT is 185 and has risen in the last 15 minutes since finding the MES had timed out.
~5:30 – IT was 183. Pulled from MES, wrapped in aluminum foil and put into the convection oven set at 300. Moved temp probe and IT was 170 in the new location.
6:10 – IT is 183 but time to eat. Pulled, opened the alum wrap and sampled. One of the bones did not pull out. It tasted great…but should rest so wrapped and left sitting on the butcher block.
Results:
Successful Cook – Bones did not pull out and meat was not falling apart. That was ok as the bite off the bone was tender and left a clean bone. Ate it without sauce and did not miss the sauce at all. The “smoked” area did not taste sooty or even smokey. More like it had been roasted next to a fire rather than in a heavy smoke. The Amazan tray burned the hickory pellets perfectly as there were only two rows burned in the 9 hours. The MES worked perfectly for the first time since the snap switch failed. I had reinstalled the chip tray and that kept the heating element from igniting the full Amazan tray.
Interesting that despite the noticeable shrinkage there was less than 1 cup of oil in the aluminum drip pan place on the grate below.
