First Use of the Masterbuilt Electric Smoker

My new toy–the Masterbuilt Electric Smoker

Also known as MES.

Our first smoker, other than the Big and Easy which is more of a giant rotisserie/oil less fryer than a smoker, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. I know a lot of people will say this isn’t a real smoker and that real smokers have fire, wood chunks, and/or charcoal. I’ve already heard this and truth is, I’m not a hardcore smoker/griller and I don’t plan on entering competitions. I just want to have a nice smokey flavor to my meats and not have to constantly worry about the inside temperature and tampering with this or that to make sure everything is as it should be. Maybe I’ll get to that one day, but right now, I think this is good.

The ribs came out exactly how I wanted them to and I’m pretty excited about trying different things with the smoker. Expect more posts on smoked meats in the future and the how to’s.

For this recipe I did the 3-2-1 method. 3 hours on the smoker @ 230 degrees with wood chips, 2 covered in foil, and 1 more hour back without the foil to get a last blast of smoke and to “freshen up.”

Before smoking and I’m already starving!

Yum! They’re finished!

This is what our ribs looked like before we put them in the grill. For the first three hours, I didn’t put any BBQ sauce on them, just a rub. When I put them in the foil wraps, I put the sauce on and made sure the wrap was tight. During this process you don’t add any wood chips since they won’t take on the flavor being in foil. You can even do this part in the oven if you want to.
Taking them out of the foil, I covered them with sauce once more and let them finish for an hour.