The chicken quarters I did a lemon pepper dry rub, and a small dose of some random spices. For the pork ribs, I made a rub with a secret ingredient....coffee grounds! I had heard about doing this while watching a cooking show and thought I would give it a try. The rest of the rub was just a basic pork rub with brown sugar, paprika, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, and garlic. I let the ribs refrigerate with the rub for a few hours.
I loaded up the charcoal basket of the smoker with about 5lbs of charcoal and put in 3 chunks of hickory. I put maybe a dozen coals in my charcoal chimney and lit those. Once they were good and hot I dumped them on top of the unlit charcoal in the drum. I let the drum heat up a bit and when it got to the temperature I was looking for I used kitchen magnets to cover the intake holes on the bottom of the drum. I covered 3 of them and left one wide open. The drum temp was right around 230.
Once that was ready I put the ribs and chicken on the rack and put the cover on.
I had originally planned on serving the ribs for dinner that day, but due to changes in the plans of the day I wasn't able to get the ribs in the cooker in time. So plan B was to grill some chicken breast. I used the same chicken rib as I did earlier and used my 22" weber kettle to grill the breast.
I cooked them over indirect heat approximately 1.5 hours with a little hickory for flavor. They looked and smelled delicious. Earlier in the day I had picked up some Stubb's Wicked Chicken Sauce and thought I would give it a try. As I was basting the chicken I realized that this sauce was a tad spicy...but not overpowering. It was quite delicious actually. I basted the chicken a couple times and then pulled them off the grill.
The chicken came out great. Very tender and moist with a nice pink smoke ring. Yes the sauce had a little kick to it, but even Mary Lou liked it.
Meanwhile, the ribs and chicken quarters continued to smoke. I let the ribs smoke for about an hour and half and then I rotated and flipped them to get a nice even bark. After 3 hours had passed, I wrapped the ribs in foil and basted them with an apple juice based mop I made. I then put them back in the smoker for another 2 hours. At this point I was going to unwrap the ribs and start basting them with some bbq sauce, but the meat was so tender the bones were starting to wiggle loose and I knew the ribs were done. They smelled soooooooo good!
I brought them into the house and even tho we had just finished dinner an hour earlier, everyone wanted to try the ribs. They were so tender and juicy. BBQ sauce not required, although it was very tasty with my Whiskey BBQ sauce.
I call that a successful first smoke on the UDS!
Happy eating,
Koopdaddy
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