Food seems to get dark pretty quick

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raydawg

Newbie
Original poster
May 27, 2014
7
10
Southern California
I do the 3-2-1 method on spare ribs and when I go to wrap them at the 3 hour mark they usually look really dark.  Nothing like the smooth dark-red color I see from other pics or on TV.  I have the WSM and my normal practice is the minion method.  Once I dump my lit coals in the center of my pile I scatter 3 or 4 wood chunks on the outside and in the middle of the lit coals.  My goal is to get the chunks burning during the wam-up period and eliminate as much as of the bad smoke as possible before putting the food on.  I usually let the smoker warmup for about 20 minutes or so, but admittedly there still is some white smoke when the food goes on.  After about 30 min or so with the food on, i get my nice blue smoke.

I'm also wondering if my rub might be the reason since I use a heavy amount of brown sugar (only sugar i use), so maybe that is burning or darkening alot?  My temps hover in the 225-250 range so i wouldn't think its burning.  I'm thinking it has to be the sugar or the fact I still have some white smoke when the food goes on, maybe I'm getting some nasty smoke build up on the food.  I have never had any complaints on the taste, but the appearance leaves something to be desired.  I can usually hide it with a thin glaze of bbq sauce but I'm tired of using it as a crutch to hide the appearance!!

any ideas?
 
You are correct on the darkness of your ribs, it's the dark brown sugar in your rub.... Especially like ya said ya used a heavy amount.... Take a look at some of the bark on say some pork butt threads on here.... They have a dark bark on them due to a fair amount of dark brown sugar !
 
For my family, that would be a lot of wood and a lot of smoke.  But that is a matter of taste unless you are getting a creosote flavor.

Brown sugar, sugar, honey and corn syrup found in rubs or sauces can burn and are a common culprit.  If they are even a culprit, that is.

I once had a Chinese friend serve me some grilled and marinated chicken that looked totally burned.  Yoshida's can do that also, but he wasn't using Yoshida's.  It actually wasn't burned and tasted wonderful.

Go figger?

Good luck and good smoking.
 
For my family, that would be a lot of wood and a lot of smoke.  But that is a matter of taste unless you are getting a creosote flavor.

Brown sugar, sugar, honey and corn syrup found in rubs or sauces can burn and are a common culprit.  If they are even a culprit, that is.

I once had a Chinese friend serve me some grilled and marinated chicken that looked totally burned.  Yoshida's can do that also, but he wasn't using Yoshida's.  It actually wasn't burned and tasted wonderful.

Go figger?

Good luck and good smoking.

I stand corrected if wrong, I was always to the understanding that dark brown sugar & the like to make the Q take on a dark color !
 
That's only if using higher temps and the brown sugar burns.
 
I'm going with the rub as your issue with color.

I haven't run into that problem yet, with my WSM.
 
thanks for the input.  Next bbq ill balance out the rub a bit more and see if that helps.  I do recall one time I did a salt-pepper only rub down and I didn't have any color issues so that's probably it.  I failed to mention this but my rub does contain other darker colored spices such as paprika and chili powder so I'm sure that doesn't help either.  I'll try and get some pics next time it happens and post them up.
 
Raydawg, hello. I have a suggestion and a wise word...
cool.gif


First , get a bottle of the "Store shelf" variety of rub ( choose your flavor from the many ) and use that on your Ribs , the sugar content is not asn high and balanced more with the other Spices in the produce. They do tend to have a lot of Salt in them so cut back on any other addition.

Second , practice Patience , as I always Preach . Let the Smoke get blue before you put the meat  in. . .

Have fun and . . .
 
 
Raydawg, hello. I have a suggestion and a wise word...
cool.gif


First , get a bottle of the "Store shelf" variety of rub ( choose your flavor from the many ) and use that on your Ribs , the sugar content is not asn high and balanced more with the other Spices in the produce. They do tend to have a lot of Salt in them so cut back on any other addition.

Second , practice Patience , as I always Preach . Let the Smoke get blue before you put the meat  in. . .

Have fun and . . .
Thanks for the tips, ill try out a store bought rub and see how it works out.

As for the the 2nd tip, the issue I'm having with that has more to do with the WSM itself.  I find that once the WSM settles in and gets the good smoke going, once i lift the lid and all that fresh air rushes in it sparks fires or dramatic temp jumps.  At that point I get more bad smoke anyways due to wood chunks catching fire.  So for me since it didn't seem like there was a way to add food during the blue smoke phase, i figured i would put it on right away so I'm not wasting fuel.
 
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