Two cooking grates in UDS question?

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pandemonium

Master of the Pit
Original poster
Aug 4, 2009
1,983
14
Florida
So how much food can you cook with the extra rack? Can you load both racks with ribs and they both cook evenly? Can you cook like eight pork buts on there? Im going to be cooking for my brothers wedding and just am wondering how to plan for the big cook?
 
I do 6-8 slabs of ribs on my UDS all the time. 3-4 on the bottom and 3-4 on the top rack depening on the size of the ribs and I have never had an issue they always come out great. Now depening on how far down you put your top rack from your lid you may or may not be able to fit a pork butt on the top rack. I wouldn't be able to fit a pork butt on my top rack unless it was pretty small because I only have about 3 inches of room from my top grate to the lid. But to cure that I picked up a charcoal dome lid that I will put on instead of the flat lid and I will be all set. Do you have a dome lid or just the flat lid the drum came with? In my experience as long as you can get the meat in the UDS and close the lid you are fine. All of my meat has some out great and I have not noticed any difference in temp between the top and bottom rack. I do however like to rotate my pork butts/brisket/chuckies ever couple of hours to make sure that if the center of the UDS is hotter than the outer edge that the meat will be done the same all the way through. But as far as top rack bottom rack I have not had any issues.
 
You'll want to leave some gaps between the meat for air flow.
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  If you fill the grates completely the drum won't be able to draft and you'll have temp issues.

Other than that, cooking on two racks works like a charm.

Dave
 
thats what i would think that if i filled the bottome rack tight with ribs it would not cook right on the top rack
 
thats what i would think that if i filled the bottome rack tight with ribs it would not cook right on the top rack
Yea you don't want to seal it up tight just leave a little space between the meat. Mine usually has plenty of space for heat/smoke to draft since I have the grates with handles on the sides so I can't pack meat on those two sides anyway.
 
I cooked 6 (7lb) butts on my drum last weekend with no problem, it took 18 hours to finish, but got throught the danger zone in a timely manner. 3 on the bottom and 3 on the top.
 
I cooked 6 (7lb) butts on my drum last weekend with no problem, it took 18 hours to finish, but got throught the danger zone in a timely manner. 3 on the bottom and 3 on the top.
I was gonna say great to hear but 18 hours? why so long wow?
 
18 hours doesn't sound too terribly long to me. I typically smoke 10 - 12lbs shoulders and some have taken as long as 26 hours from start to cooler. 16 - 20 hours is pretty average for me.
 
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