Howdy folks,
In my biggest disappointment of my nascent smoking career, I did a pair of chuck roasts in the Pit Boss vertical pellet smoker as an experiment, and they both came out absolutely awful. Dry, stringy, tough, despite all nominal performance until serving time.
Trying another version, this time to compare between the PB and my recently acquired SnS kettle. This will be my second comparison experiment between these two cookers, after the pork butt halves I did recently. I'm using a pair of "Mishima Reserve" American wagyu chucks I got from CrowdCow. Amazingly, they are exactly the same weight at 2.38lb/1.08kg, but have very different shapes.
As you can see, they're dry brined, and tomorrow I'll hit them with Hank's Bona Fide Beef Rub, using the recipes that Henrik so generously shared with the Pit not long ago. (Didn't even know there was such a thing as shiitake powder, but found some on Amazon that will arrive today.) I'll be making mine salt-free, of course, since I've already brined 'em.
In the post-game analysis comments on my pork butt comparison thread, glitchy very cogently pointed out that a better comparison than slavishly adhering to identical temperature profiles is to use each cooker in its respective wheelhouse. For a vertical p-smoker like my Pit Boss, that means using the low-T "smoke" setting for an hour or so before bumping up to the primary target T. I didn't do that on the butt-off, even though that is my SOP except for that one experiment, so it wasn't a fair fight.
That target will be 250F/121C, and I'll be running the PB using 100% hickory pellets from Cookin' Pellets, and the SnS kettle with B&B charcoal and three hickory chunks. Will have a dozen coals lit in the corner of the SnS insert, then add unlit to the remaining space, and place the three chunks to be consumed as the coals burn from one end to the other. I'll put the skinny one on the kettle and the more equant one on the PB - will make it easier for most of the meat to stay as far from the fire as possible in the kettle.
Recap of my first chuck-off: with everything so dry, there were lots of comments about wrapping; but my admittedly small (n=4) prior experience, they'd always been perfect with no wrapping. What I did do differently was a much longer rest than I'd done before. So those are variables I may explore here.
I have done one chuck since then, and used the foil boat method for the first time on it. It was absolutely amazing! Now, granted, it was a Click Akaushi chuck, but I watched as, over time, the bottom of the boat filled up with juice, then during the rest it all went right back in the meat, because that foil was damn near dry when I served, and the meat was spectacular. So I am very likely to do that on these as well.
This will also be the inaugural use of my new Fireboard 2. I don't think the cables will stretch to run everything on the FB, so I'll likely use it on the PB and use the Meater+ for the kettle piece.
Come on by during the day tomorrow for updates, and wish me luck!
In my biggest disappointment of my nascent smoking career, I did a pair of chuck roasts in the Pit Boss vertical pellet smoker as an experiment, and they both came out absolutely awful. Dry, stringy, tough, despite all nominal performance until serving time.
Trying another version, this time to compare between the PB and my recently acquired SnS kettle. This will be my second comparison experiment between these two cookers, after the pork butt halves I did recently. I'm using a pair of "Mishima Reserve" American wagyu chucks I got from CrowdCow. Amazingly, they are exactly the same weight at 2.38lb/1.08kg, but have very different shapes.
As you can see, they're dry brined, and tomorrow I'll hit them with Hank's Bona Fide Beef Rub, using the recipes that Henrik so generously shared with the Pit not long ago. (Didn't even know there was such a thing as shiitake powder, but found some on Amazon that will arrive today.) I'll be making mine salt-free, of course, since I've already brined 'em.
In the post-game analysis comments on my pork butt comparison thread, glitchy very cogently pointed out that a better comparison than slavishly adhering to identical temperature profiles is to use each cooker in its respective wheelhouse. For a vertical p-smoker like my Pit Boss, that means using the low-T "smoke" setting for an hour or so before bumping up to the primary target T. I didn't do that on the butt-off, even though that is my SOP except for that one experiment, so it wasn't a fair fight.
That target will be 250F/121C, and I'll be running the PB using 100% hickory pellets from Cookin' Pellets, and the SnS kettle with B&B charcoal and three hickory chunks. Will have a dozen coals lit in the corner of the SnS insert, then add unlit to the remaining space, and place the three chunks to be consumed as the coals burn from one end to the other. I'll put the skinny one on the kettle and the more equant one on the PB - will make it easier for most of the meat to stay as far from the fire as possible in the kettle.
Recap of my first chuck-off: with everything so dry, there were lots of comments about wrapping; but my admittedly small (n=4) prior experience, they'd always been perfect with no wrapping. What I did do differently was a much longer rest than I'd done before. So those are variables I may explore here.
I have done one chuck since then, and used the foil boat method for the first time on it. It was absolutely amazing! Now, granted, it was a Click Akaushi chuck, but I watched as, over time, the bottom of the boat filled up with juice, then during the rest it all went right back in the meat, because that foil was damn near dry when I served, and the meat was spectacular. So I am very likely to do that on these as well.
This will also be the inaugural use of my new Fireboard 2. I don't think the cables will stretch to run everything on the FB, so I'll likely use it on the PB and use the Meater+ for the kettle piece.
Come on by during the day tomorrow for updates, and wish me luck!
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