Another First:: Smoked Pork Ribs

I thought I'd try my hand at smoking ribs using 10.5's method. Usually, I bake the ribs in the oven for 2 1/2 hours covered at 300F then finish on the grill with BBQ sauce. As usual, my husband is scared I'm going to ruin the ribs by trying something new. So, when they had pork spare ribs on sale for $1.98 a pound I bought two 5lbs racks: one for the old way and one to try 10.5's method.

I used Willingham's Rub from the Bradley Recipe Site the night before and let them marinade overnight in the fridge.

Willingham's Rub

• 4 Tbsp. cumin
• 4 Tbsp. thyme
• 4 Tbsp. garlic powder
• 4 Tbsp. black pepper -- freshly ground
• 2 Tbsp. cayenne pepper
• 2 Tbsp. salt
• 2 Tbsp. curry powder
• 1 Tbsp. onion powder
• 1 Tbsp. MSG or other flavor enhancer

Smoked them for 3 hrs in hickory @ 225F

Wrapped them in foil with apple juice and cooked them 2 hours longer, then applied a honey BBQ sauce.

And after an hour of cooking without the foil they came out like this.

They came out fantastic, I liked them better than the old way even. Our guest thought they won the taste test, Hubby said I made them too spicy. They were even prettier, too.

They went great with squash roasted with spices, butter and maple syrup...YUM!

Our First Smoked Salmon

Our friend has been visiting us this week and he is a new Bradley owner. Thinking that I know what I'm doing ( yeah, right! ), he wanted to learn to smoke salmon. I have never smoked salmon before but what a great opportunity to try it out with a fellow Bradley Buddy!

We basically followed Kummock's method but we modified the brine a little.
For our 5 pounds of salmon we used this:

Brine
1 quart water
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup pickling salt
1/2 pound of brown sugar
2 TBS pickling spice

We used 3 pounds of Coho (silver) salmon and 2 pounds of Sockeye (red) salmon. The skin-on fillets were 1" thick. We made sure that they were free of bones.

We marinaded this in the fridge for 8 hours turning about every two hours. It looks nice sitting there in the Pyrex pan but I ending up putting it in a 2 gallon ziploc bag when I saw how full the pan got.

After marinading, we reaching the glazing stage. The salmon pieces were placed on smoking racks and placed in the fridge for 15 hours. I didn't know what exactly they should look like when the pellicle was formed but now I understand. They came out very glossy but not wet just sticky to the touch.

We smoked them using 2 1/2 hours of alder.

2 hours at 100F
3 hours at 140F
1 hour at 175F

They came out fantastic! The sockeye's were richer because of their higher oil content but they were both delicious. My Bradley Smoker never ceases to amaze me. I could not have imagined making a smoked salmon on my own of such high quality.