There are a lot of evil people hangin' round these parts........

[klflowers]

So I started feeling bad for you. Evil MCS strikes again, another unsuspecting victim. Then I remembered how you slowly, steadily sucked me into the insidious Bronco cult. No more sympathy.

Nice pickup, Unc. Very nice indeed.

[Uncle Bob]

Ah, ha, ha (in my best Snidely Whiplash impersonation)

[Uncle Bob]

There may be some newer members who see this thread who aren't yet familiar with some of the reasons that Lone Star Grillz is so highly regarded. Here's an example of one of those reasons that relates to build quality. If you have any experience with evaluating weld quality and operator skill, this confluence of four weld beads should knock your socks off.

[Panhead John]

Bob, when you first posted this the other day, I actually enlarged the pic a little and marveled at the weld quality. I did some welding in my early 20’s and that sir, is picture perfect welding!

[CaptainMike]

Layin' down dimes...

[02ebz06]

Two week left of my 14 week wait for my LSG 20x42 pellet smoker.

[hoovarmin]

Beautiful rig. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

[ofelles]

Very, very nice indeed. And yes LSG LSG LSG

[Mike-Sid]

Congratulations!
I bet those wheels really made it irresistible!

You are a victim for sure!

[Uncle Bob]

I've decided to nickname this cooker "The Beastette"..............it would have to be bigger than it's 94 gallon sizing to qualify as a true beast. Today I did the first protein cook on her in preparation for a larger cook of three beef plate ribs for company this coming Friday. Hate to mess up that much prime beef as a first cook on a completely unknown entity. This pic is about an hour in with the fire running clean and temp at 250 steady, ready to load in a rack of spare ribs.

Toughest thing about the whole cook was the heat coming off the fire whenever I opened the fire box door...............ambient temp here today was between 100-105 during the cook. This thing is a wonderment in how readily it adjusts to whatever temp you desire and how easy it is to maintain cook chamber temp throughout the process.

There are lots of stories out there in the world about the best/only way to run an offset. I've played with enough different types of cookers to know that most of that is heavy on opinion and light on fact. Each cooking device has it's characteristics, as does the operator. One nostrum that I am at complete odds with is the idea that you leave the exhaust damper wide open and throttle with the fire box door/vents/dampers, whatever you have. I call BS, in part. Yes, controlling air into the fire box is important, but throttling temp, at least on this cooker, is also done by balancing the exhaust damper. I generally like to smoke somewhere 250-275 so learned where to set the dampers during my burn in testing to achieve that. But also being curious I played with the exhaust damper to see what it would change. I found that I could gain 50 degrees of smoke chamber temp in 2-3 minutes by doubling the size of the damper opening. Closing it had almost as quick results, though a couple minutes slower. I call that great versatility. Perhaps it's the design of the collector at the base of the stack that contributes to excellent draw, but this ol' girl can really draw air when she wants to. During the entire cook I had either very pale blue smoke or no visible smoke at all.

Here is what the rack of St. Louis spares ended up looking like at service time.
If you look carefully you might notice that there is some bone peaking through on some of the rib bones. I'm going to attribute that to aggressive butchering at the processing plant...........I only trimmed the flap on the back and the thin end of the rack that usually gets dried out. That tight trimming resulted in a mixed outcome texture wise. I prefer to have an easy bite off the bone, but shy of fall off the bone. On the portions of each rib that had sufficiently thick meat portion I got the desired outcome, but on those portions where the meat was way thin it was falling off. So, slightly disappointing, but not because of cooking technique. Otherwise, they were moist and not overly smoky tasting, which I was happy for.

Another outcome that was unexpected was the amount of "smoke ring". I think most of us know that the pink ring isn't an indicator of smoke intensity, but rather a chemical reaction. But I've never had a smoke ring this pronounced on any protein, much less ribs. Look closely at this pic and you'll see that there is almost complete penetration of the smoke ring except for a tiny bit of "grey" in the thickest part of the meat.

BTW, the tater tot mess on the plate was a cooking process failure of sorts. They ate fine, but the goal was to form a tater tot waffle in the waffle iron. My guess is our iron is a Belgian style and these small tots weren't big enough to get crushed into a waffle form as intended. Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Not shown are the ears of corn I also did on the LSG. The top shelf in the chamber runs about 100 degrees higher than the main grate because of the unique baffle design LSG uses on the Texas Edition. Twenty minutes up there gets the ears cooked to a nice texture with a hint of smoke flavor. Probably won't be my go to, but satisfactory nonetheless.

[STEbbq]

I haven’t scrolled back to see if I said this already,
but damn Bob, she is purty! Those wheels…would they look out of place on a PK300? Ha. Congrats!

[tenphases]

Whooooo that is pretty!!!!!! My daughter just entered her first semester of college but this post is making me think that maybe she should take out some loans

[rlozinak]

Welcome to the LSG family. Congrats on a nice cooker

[FireMan]

Yup, as many have said, it is a mighty fine cooker!
But those Wibs! Oh mama!

[randy.56]

Uncle Bob, Now Mr. Uncle Bob, you da man, congratulations. That's one fine smoker.

[fzxdoc]

A nice, thoughtful cook. You showed that cooker some serious respect, learning it's ins and outs, literally. The Beastette sure is a beauty.

Kathryn

[Uncle Bob]

I mentioned earlier that we had scheduled a gathering to feast on Dino ribs, so here is some commentary and pics to close out the story.

We planned on a group of eight so pulled three racks of plate ribs giving each person their own bone plus a spare. These were all prime grade beef so the intramuscular fat was in abundance.
Those of you who have prepared these know that 6-8 hours to cook is not an unreasonable expectation. Add another 2-3 hours for resting and you've got a pretty full day invested in the cook. I started the fire around 7:30 in the morning, gave it an hour or so to build a good bed of glowing coals and stabilize the cook chamber temp.

Ribs went on around 9 and began their odyssey. After a couple hours they were starting to gain good color and render some fat.
Once they had set a nice bark and rendered well I wrapped them in butcher paper for the final two hours of cook. They were in the vicinity of 180 degrees internal. The cooker had been running a fairly steady 250 all day. I closed out the preparation in a holding oven at 160 for 2.5 hours. Time to cut for serving and they turned out pretty nice looking.
The guests all went nuts over them so apparently they were cooked okay. Some really liked the bark, others focused on how moist and succulent they were. Maybe not as fatty as an A5 Wagyu steak, but close enough. Nobody finished their entire rib so doggy bags were supplied.

What have I learned so far about cooking on a stick burner? First off, it's not as scary as folk legend might lead you to believe. If any of you have been intimidated by the idea of cooking on one, don't be. Like most other endeavors, with a little preparation they are easy to figure out. Well, maybe that depends on the kind of offset as well. Since I've never used a cheap offset, only read accounts of them, I can't testify to their ease of use and outcomes. This LSG is a dream to cook on. As long as you maintain a good, hot, coal bed your fire will burn clean and the temp will stay in a reasonable range for the entire cook. I've only done the two cooks; spares and Dinos, but both were comparatively easy, though tending the fire is more demanding than on most of the other cookers we see utilized.

If you've watched the Meathead video on smoke you'll recall his referring to smoke as an additional "spice", and I agree. Since sensing the smoke flavor is subjective it may be difficult to convey the flavor differences between an offset and, let's say, a barrel smoker. The best I can do is to say that the smoke flavor, to my taste buds, is sweeter and more balanced relative to the rest of the seasoning. Not sweeter in the cloying sense of cotton candy, but sweeter as in comparing a somewhat boring flavored tomato from the grocery store versus the more full bodied flavor of a good, vine ripened tomato from your garden. A well done protein in a barrel cooker isn't boring exactly, it's quite good in it's own right, but it is slightly different.

As a closing thought, this is another fine way, among many, to enjoy outdoor cooking. Enjoy the journey......................

[Meathead]

I drooled on my keyboard and shorted it out.

[Johnny Booth]

Lovely plate o ribs! 👍👍

I am with ya fer sure on the offset. I love the process. I prefer to smoke and grill with live fire whenever I can.