Just Getting Started

My name's Mark and I'd like to invite you to my culinary adventure titled, "What's Mark Cooking?"  Together, we'll navigate my meals as I smoke, fry, bake, and roast my way through breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Ok, mostly dinner and some lunches - my breakfasts aren't that interesting but every once in a while I'll throw one of those up here too.  I'll probably also give you my insights into restaurants that I visit - why not?

Along the way, you'll get to know my family, my pets, my music, and everything else that surrounds me and my cooking!

So hang on, this should be fun.

I thought I'd start with my smoker!

I own a Weber Smokey Mountain which my amazing wife Barbara bought me to smoke meats.  Side note - my wife doesn't eat red meat so she doesn't get the bounty of her gracious gift when I smoke beef....which means, I rarely smoke beef :)

But she's out of town now and while the cats away....

Today I'm smoking Beef Back Ribs.  I wanted to smoke beef short ribs but couldn't find any at the butcher.  Beef back ribs aren't as meaty but they are a bit more tender.   The prep was simple:

1. Make sure the membrane on the bone side of the ribs were pulled off.  I asked the butcher to do that.  You need the membrane OFF so that the smoke can permeate the meat on all sides.
2. Simple rub - salt and pepper.  No need for complicated dry rubs on these ribs.  That way, we get the full flavor of the beef and the marbling.
3. Rub both sides of the ribs with the s&p

No matter what I'm smoking, I always use cherry wood for flavoring except when there's none available in which case I use pecan wood. For smoking, I use the Minion Method to manage the low temperature.  You can read more about the minion method HERE.   Once the temp in the smoker hit 225, I placed the ribs on the upper rack and covered the smoker:

                

Then I followed rule #1 in smoking - DO NOT LIFT THE COVER UNLESS ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED!!

After two hours, the ribs looked the the image below on the left.  I then removed the ribs, placed them in foil, and set them back on the smoker (covered) for another 45 minutes.  After two hours, the smoke should have done it's job and the remainder of the time allows for additional looking time.

FINISHED PRODUCT

 

YUM!!