Tragedy last week - Corrective action taken

[johnec00]

We had a tragic occurrence during last week's Rib Day (pork and beef) cook in the PBC. One of the racks of beef ribs fell off the hook and tried to play charcoal. Talk about crispy. Anyway, I added another set of pegs for a grill rack just above the handle of the coal basket. At least now, if something falls off, it wont fall directly into the charcoal.

[Polarbear777]

That’s a good mod.

[Jerod Broussard]

Corrective Actions

[JCGrill]

HACCP regulations. I haven't seen those since I stopped doing automation for food and beverage. Thanks for the wayback.

[FireMan]

I especially like th 417.4(a) (2) (iii).

[RonB]

Grate idea.

[Huskee]

I see what you did there, and it was a grate pun.

[JimLinebarger]

Had that happen with a pork butt last year. The fire was large! I now have 3 levels of pegs for grates and a drip pan when I do some things.

[johnec00]

Yea, I already had a set of pegs about half way up the barrel for a drip pan (especially for baked beans).

[JeffJ]

That's clever.

[JeffJ]

I had a rack of ribs fall into the fire (rite of passage for PBC ownership). Fortunately, I had just pulled it to put sauce on it and it tore away as I was re-hanging it. The funny thing was I had some difficulty finding it with all of that PBC fog. It spent less than a minute on the fire and turned out just fine.

[FireMan]

Had it happen to me onest too.

[fzxdoc]

I haven't had any meat hit the fire yet in my PBC, but the minute I say that, gravity will be doing its darndest to help me join that particular group. I ordered an extra set of hooks and use them liberally for extra insurance.

I like your solution, johnec00 . Easy and effective.


Kathryn

[johnec00]

Agree with you on the extra hooks. I had 7 pieces to hang and only 8 hooks, so the double was in the heaviest pork rack. It has occurred to me that if a piece of meat fell to my secondary grate and stayed there for very long, it would still probably result in thoroughly burned meat. Yesterday, I made some extra hooks out of some stainless rod I had laying around.

[JimLinebarger]

fzxdoc Quick, delete your post! You might be next!

Mine happened because of a brain fart. I used only ONE hook on a pork butt (was doing 2 at that time but the other one didn't fall). I had just mopped them and came back about 200 minutes later and noticed a lot of smoke and then some flames flickering. Charred about 1/3 of that butt, however I salvaged the rest. I had to put both on the rack, only had the original posts at the time. Butt on a side note, pork butt will stoke you fire very well.

[TBoneJack]

We had a tragic occurrence during last week's Rib Day (pork and beef) cook in the PBC. One of the racks of beef ribs fell off the hook and tried to play charcoal. Talk about crispy. Anyway, I added another set of pegs for a grill rack just above the handle of the coal basket. At least now, if something falls off, it wont fall directly into the charcoal.

Don't feel bad. Here's what happened to me about a year ago:

I was cooking a 14 lb whole packer brisket in my PBC. Things were going great, on time and according to plan.

A few hours into the cook I was sitting at my computer with my ThermoWorks Smoke remote sitting right in front of me. I looked at it and noticed something really strange. The pit temp was steadily going down, but the meat temp was going up. I ran outside and saw thick smoke billowing from the PBC.

I rescued the brisket from the charcoal basket and rehung it. It finished OK, but one side was pretty charred.

[NSR_BBQ]

I did something similar to my PBC recently, but for slightly different reasons. In addition to catching anything that falls, I wanted to be able to use the PBC as an improvised charcoal grill. So far, I've used it as a grill for two cooks with good results:

1) Used one chimney full of lump and dumped it one side of the basket to cook some steaks. I cooked over the indirect side until the steaks were about 10 degrees lower than my target temperature, then seared each side for a couple of minutes over direct heat.
2) Used one chimney of lump and spread across the entire basket to brown up some brats. The brats were cooked inside in a beer/onion/butter/garlic/salt mixture and then browned for a few minutes on the PBC.

Why did I want to use the PBC as a "grill"? Its the only charcoal cooker I currently have.

[Santamarina]

That’s the #1 reason I’ve stayed away from the PBC.

[johnec00]

I've had my PBC for almost 5 years now. Probably use it every week or two. So, that's between 125 and 250 cooks. This is the first time I've had the problem. So, I consider the PBC a very good investment.

[JGo37]

I spend so many hours sitting on the patio, looking at the grills and thinkin'. Nice to see someone doin'!

[hoovarmin]

I've never had anything drop because of tearing apart but I have dropped a rack of ribs when I used my hand (in glove) to pull them instead of the tool. I've only cooked 1 pork shoulder on it and I trussed that one and left it to hang through the entire cook with no problem. I like tying big hunks of meat like that no matter what cooker I use for more even cooking.

[Bob's BBQ]

Brilliant - simple and can't miss. Nice work.