Also fold over a small piece of foil several times putting between the lid and barrell works.
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I have had my Pit barrel for almost 3 years. My second one is also getting broke in, as I received it a few months ago.
I have a few tips. The first one may very well get me shot
Lighter fluid method, I have found, is the #1 best way to light the pit. It's the only I have found to guarantee that 100% of the coals on top get 100% lit at the same rate, I don't have to dork with the chimney, and no, there are no fumes to taint the food. I sometimes have two barrels going at the same time and I simply don't have time to be filling and dumping charcoal while prepping the food to go into the pit, hooking and such. Believe me, really, the lighter fluid method is your friend. I fill the basket with charcoal, absolutely drench with lighter fluid, insert basket in cooker, and put a match to it. At sea level no more than 13 minutes for all cooks except for chicken. For chicken I'll sneak over the recommended 15 minutes to 17, giving me a very high and skin crisping temp. After this allotted time, put the lid on and walk away.
(now let the flaming begin, no pun intended)
Second, back to the damper. if your bottoms were noticeably crisper than the top, your bottom damper is open too far. I made this mistake and just had a flippin mess. I have my ideas why but my advice is solid and has served me well. Open the vent on the bottom the proper amount as stipulated in the instructions and no more. Then weld it in place. Don't touch it.
The panic that sets in the damper changing/lid cracking is all started by the devil in all of this; a barrel thermometer. My advice? Take your barrel thermometer and toss it. Your hand works just fine. A hand on the top will tell you the proper barrel temp. If you feel the lid going from "hot" to "warm", just crack the lid for 15 to 20 minutes. This is consistent with Noah's advice and it works. And while someone here said doing this will cause the barrel temps to get out of hand, again, remember, we are only cracking the lid when the fire is so far down it's going to take it a while to come back. The temp monitoring people start cracking lids and getting panicked and not allowing the barrel to "do its thing." The PBC, in operation, will vary greatly in temp from one location in the barrel to the other and throughout the cook. It's black magic. Just let the thing do what it's designed to do. I had a barrel thermometer on mine for the first 10 cooks and had fits. I won't use one. I suggest you don't either.
The only time I have had to crack the lid is with two pork butts at the same time when I neglect to trim off the excess fat. Outside of that, I've never had to crack the lid, unless I have used old charcoal or it's been super cold outside.
Old charcoal, you say? Yeah, in my experience, is the #1 issue I have had. So, ensure you are using 100% fresh kingsford. I bought charcoal from a big box store and was proud when I could get the black strip off without ripping it first. I have found through experience that if you can carefully remove the black seal off of the bag without ripping it, promptly toss the whole bag as it means the bag has been exposed to high humidity, softening the glue.
LAST BIT: Do not use wood of any kind, do not deviate from Kingsford until you get all of the other factors sorted out. Get a few solid cooks under you, then start playing with wood. Wood chips on top of the charcoal in high quanities affects air flow so go easy on it if you must. Frankly, no wood works for me.
Happy cooking.Comment
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I am also part of the lighter fluid lighting renegades. It is the simplest way to light the PBC. I have refined my method of applying the fluid. I use a 2 oz bottle and dribble 2oz on each side of the basket. Let it burn for 12-15 minutes put the lid on and I place an extra bag of 20 lb of charcoal on the lid. Keeps the lid tight .Comment
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Well, here's the thing about the obsession over temps with the PCB. When you have, for example, a cookie recipe that calls for 325 degrees in a conventional oven. Let's say you crank that oven to 400 degrees, what happens. First, it cooks faster. Second, you burn the bottoms and ONLY the bottoms.
You can take your gas or charcoal grill all the way up to 600 degrees and throw a steak on. Where's the sear marks? Where the rack is and only where the rack is. 600 degree grill with burners going wide open, lid closed, and yet the meat doesn't burn all the way around. Why? Easy. Metal isn't touching the meat.
And in theory, what of high temps in the PBC? Well, since metal isn't touching the meat.....you see? I am saying is since there is no metal touching the meat inside the pit barrel, temperature really doesn't matter. 250? 350? The meat doesn't care. Now what WILL affect it is convection. You start cracking the lid and opening vents, or closing vents and such, and you just screw up the designed in convection of the unit. The PBC, by design, does not allow a lot of convection. It allows very little air flow. That's why you can get a relatively small amount of cheap charcoal to last over 8 hours for a cook. That's why the humidity that the meat has in it is retained inside the barrel. The design is brilliant, and it is truly fiddle free.
Now on a high humidity day with a full barrel, you may need to crack the lid for 20 to 30 minutes if you start to lose temp and again, don't use a thermometer, just a hand on the lid. Don't fear the temp. There is no metal touching the meat so it's not going to torch your meat.
In fact, what I recommend, and i wish I would have done this myself, is to do a burn without any meat in the barrel. Feel that lid at every hour and see how it maintains temp. How hot is that lid, by touch. Now, shoot for that when you cook. Just yesterday, a very humid day and 6 big racks of ribs, I had to crack the lid at hour 3 for 20 minutes. No sweat, just do it, then put the lid back on and continue on.Comment
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Convection / Conduction / Radiant - check on the site or in the MH book. Explains it all. Like TroyOHchatter says!
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TroyOHchatter I'm with ya I no longer use a probe to measure cooking temp feel the lid now and again and let it go. For chicken 1 rebar or some folded foil between the lid and barrel, seems to always work out. I do keep a probe in the meat to monitor what it's doing.
The little black barrell just seems to be running on the "FM Theory".Comment
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Wow! Thank you everyone for the replies. I have studied your replies and have learned a lot! I have down 3-4 cooks since. 1 with 4 ribs and two chickens. 1 with a small pork butt, 1 with 3 chickens, 1 with sirloin roast, and yesterday, a 13# butt with whole chicken. I have an excel sheet for each cook. The last two cooks, I didn't touch the lid except to inspect meat. The temp in the cooker averaged about 250. Sometimes it would fluctuate either way. I did set the damper per factory instructions. The big butt took eight hours and turned out ok. I haven't used any wood yet as I need more hands on time with this. Simple design that seems to work great. The small butt was better. This site is well worth the money.Comment
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Noob PBC owner here (haven't cooked yet) drinking in all I can find. Thanks to the OP, giro and thanks to TroyOHchatter , jecucolo , and hogdog6 for the excellent tips. Two things struck me ...
I suspect this hobby attracts a fair share of OCD folks (guilty!
), and part of the reason I wanted the PBC was it looks like I can follow Noah's instructions and forget the thermometer and obsessing and tweaking, which may in fact caused chef-induced-oscillation (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot-induced_oscillation). You folks have strengthened my resolve to just go with what it was designed to do on the very first cook, and discipline myself not to tweak.
Second, I've ruminated deeply over the lighter fluid heresy ... I too was a chimney evangelist (ne, zealot), and I've been flummoxed over why the lighter fluid seems to work in the PBC for so many. Then it hit me. If you constantly use fluid in, say, a Weber Kettle, you are repeatedly soaking the accumulated goo and crud in the bottom of the grill with the stuff, and eventually the thing smells like a diesel bus. But in Noah's procedure, you have the charcoal basket outside the cooker, and it is open on the bottom. Any flow through ends up on your driveway. As you move the coal basket to the cooker, any liquid lighter fluid is flashing off/soaking in, but none of it is deposited in the barrel. When it's lit, you can, theoretically, evaporate all vestiges of it away. There are enough of you "lighter fluid lighting renegades", and Noah must know what he's advocating as the inventor of the PBC, that I am going to try it, as well, in my first cook. It seems you get very consistent results with it.
This thread has been great! I won't get to use the PBC until August 27 due to travel, but I will report back. Strictly by the book for me. May be a nail-biting experience for this anal-retentive knucklehead, but I'm determined to let the PBC "do its thing"!
And, Hogdog? Yeah, I guess it's "magic", too.
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I usually let my PBC do its thing w/ cooking temp but I keep an eye on food temp w/ a probe. I do usually use a probe for cooking temp but don't freak out when it's reading 400 deg when I am smoking a pork shoulder or brisket. I keep an eye on food temp and always produce fantabulous food.Comment
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I'm a little late to the discussion. I have not purchased a PBC yet but am planning to get one soon. Giro, I noticed you said you used a chimney and then after they are ready you dumped the hot coals into the basket and waited another 20 minutes. I haven't had a chance to read all the lighting tips on this forum but I do know that the PBC instructions and the lighting video on the PBC site says to start your cook immediately after dumping your hot coals into the basket. Not sure if that will really change anything but its worth a shot. Also I don't know how accurate and useful meat probes really are in ribs.
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When you get your PBC, Josh Moskop , it's great to follow Noah's instructions in his videos. That's how most of us got started with our much-loved PBCs. The PBC folks offer amazing customer service, and you can't go wrong with their advice.Originally posted by Josh Moskop View Post
For me, after the first few cooks, I was having trouble with consistency with my PBC. Sometimes, for example, a chicken would be ready in 1 hour and other times the same weight/size chicken would take over 2 hours. Either way, the chicken tasted great. So I started collecting cook times for various meats cooked on the PBC. As a PBC newbie, that gave me a handle on when I could plan supper times or entertaining schedules. I published that pretty long list in this topic:
My goal was to have the PBC run like an appliance, with predictable cook times so my family wouldn't have to settle for PB&J for supper at 9pm while the chicken in the PBC took its old sweet time.
I later found that, for me, consistency was based largely on getting a good light on the coals--one that would allow the fire to burn well and evenly throughout the cook. So this lighting method evolved. For consistency of cook time with my PBC, it worked much better than Noah's instructions.
Each PBC has its own quirks. When you get yours, the results of the first few cooks will bring you up to speed in learning those quirks.
Why let the fire burn for a bit after pouring the coals? Because sometimes when you add the meat right after pouring the chimney of coals, the PBC billows a lot of white smoke, which most folks try to avoid in their cooks. With dense white smoke, a little goes a long way, Meathead tells us. Too much can make the food taste bitter. So letting the fire stabilize for a bit and start putting out thinner (blue) smoke in place of that white smoke before adding the meat is often a good idea.
HTH,
Kathryn
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Great Advice thank you! I just got my PBC this past weekend and I can't wait to try it out! This forum is exactly why I joined the Pitmaster Club! -
I just got a pit barrel cooker, and started off with chicken leg/thigh combo. Results were tasty and juicy, but had kind of a smoked ham flavor. Will it lose some of that over smokiness if I wait a while longer before putting the meat on? Or will I have to go back to the gas grill for chicken? -
Cruiser71 , the smoke flavor on the PBC is pretty pronounced, certainly compared to (in general) stick burners, gassers, pellet smokers, electric smokers, for example. Letting the fire burn a little longer before adding the meat helps to minimize that smokiness. Give the chicken another try. The PBC makes great chicken.
Kathryn
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You're going to fall in love with that PBC, Josh Moskop . Best food ever and so easy. What are you doing for the first cook?
KathrynComment
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I did just that, waited a while before putting the meat on, and it worked great. Can't wait to try some beef!
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