Stop watching your temperatures. Just set your air intake and let her ride. I’ve done only a few cooks, my most recent being yesterday (spare ribs, sorry no pics). I decided to not monitor the barrel temp and just let it do its thing, damn the consequences. The ribs were fantastic. It’s almost not fair. And this is coming from someone who likes to watch his cooker temps.
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👍 the more I cook the less I sweat. -
Spot onComment
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I don't disagree with this. But how do you know when to start checking for doneness?Comment
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I still monitor barrel and meat temps ... just in case something goes horribly wrong (it hasn't yet). I've just learned not to obsess about what the PBC decides it wants to do on any given day.Comment
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I'm not sure it's much of a secret. "Set it and forget it" is pretty much the PBC website's motto.
That said, for the way I cook, I tend to want my PBC to smoke like an appliance, that is, reproducibly with a pretty well-defined ETA for the meat. Monitoring the PBC and the meat temps is one way that I can make that happen. But to each his/her own.
KathrynComment
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Hugh , so nice to hear from you! You really don't need a temperature controller for the PBC, but some folks use them. Because I monitor the PBC temps with 2 ambient probes and keep the temps where I like them, I can pretty much predict when the meat will be ready--within reason. Sort of like setting the temp on an oven. There are always surprises with smoking, though.
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I agree with ColonialDawg - When I first got the PBC (it hit 4 years old last month), I fooled around with temperature monitoring and lighting methods. As it turns out, I get the best results when I light just like the PBC site recommends, and just let it do its thing. Exceptions are for hot cooks like poultry or steaks on the PBC skewers where I just crack the lid a bit. Besides, I have other critical duties to attend to during the cook.
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I'll fiddle a little but only if things get out of hand. This past weekend it hit 330 and was climbing (I used KBB and Kathryn's lighting instructions) so I jammed foil into 2 of the rebar holes. It very slowly came down to 270 and I removed the foil. It climbed back up to 295 and stayed there. I was fine with that and the pork butt and chuck turned out really good.Comment
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I still monitor but I don't think much of the temps unless I fubar my initial lighting and I don't get a good start and temps start out too low and never climb. I've had that happen a couple times on me but haven't figured out exactly why. I agree though that you don't need to sweat it on the temps much. I'll even let it run in the 325-350 range, if it goes there, as it gets the food done quicker and given how damn humid it is inside I haven't had anything dry out on me.Comment
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I don’t stress about temps, but do monitor because my PBC tends to run at a lower temperature. I’ve had issues before of the temp dropping under 220, which is almost irreversible.Comment
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I don’t have a PBC (yet), but have learned to stop sweating keeping my temps right at 225. My butts and briskets are doing well in overnight cooks with my kettle + SNS and I’ve had temps get into the 300’s at least once. Best butt I think I ever made was Sunday, and I turned off the high and low pit temp alarms on the smoke and went to sleep for 8 hours... letting the SNS do its thing. Just kept the meat high alarm on.Comment
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I monitor the drum temp to let me know if something fell off the hook (only happened once). On my next rib cook I'm tempted to leave the thermometer on the shelf.
After two decades of running an offset that's tough to do!
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I still monitor mine. I have low temp. issues no matter what starting method I use or how high my initial temperature is. I have had 2 instances of almost dead coals when I wanted to see how low it would go without attention. I am a very frustrated PBC user but I keep at it as I know one day I will solve the puzzle. It is a rib cooking machine and I like the finished product so I will keep at it. I did make 3 wood shims of different thickness so I now have various "settings" to use when I crack the lid (which I have to do on every cook)Comment
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I just purchased the PBC. The first cook was a bit of a bust because I tried to control temp. I'm at sea level and started with only 20 briquettes. I pulled the ribs off at 3 hours even though I know I should have kept them on for an additional hour or more. (I had the in-laws over and they insisted that I pull them because they thought they were done and wanted to eat. They were wrong) The ribs were not tender enough and dried out quick. I tossed the rest after everyone was done eating (almost a full rack of BB). The chicken came out good though, but I noticed that the temp on the chicken seemed to "stall" during the cook. My smoke was saying it was stalled at 155 degrees, but when I checked with my MK4 it was at 165+. Has anyone ever had this issue? My barrel was running between 225-250. Chicken sat in the barrel for 2 hours.Comment
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I don't much care for counting briquettes. 40 KBB briquettes weighs just a scosh over 2 pounds. The PBC website says that 1/4 should be lighted in the chimney, so I weigh out 8 pounds in the basket, then dump a little over 2 of the 8 pounds in the chimney then light with a weber lighter cube for 12-15 minutes and dump. Works for me (full sized PBC, not PBJ).
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