KA-BOBS!

Shish Kabobs - Noun: A dish of pieces of marinated meat and vegetables cooked and served on skewers.


The menu for the family gathering for Memorial Day this year included Beef and Vegetable Kabobs. I cooked about 40 skewers of beef and veggies on the PG1000.  The trick here is the relatively small "direct cooking" area on the PG1000.  This is easily managed however with a great result!  I cooked about 20 kabobs at a time by first putting them all indirect then cooking 5 skewers at a time directly on the grate then as they approached being done they were moved to the upper rack above the grate and 5 more were moved onto the direct grate.  As the top rack finished they were moved to the upper right, and eventually put in a pan on the lower left.  

This rotation demonstrates the different cooking areas of the PG1000 and the relative temp difference in these areas.  Left lower grate is highest with above the great next, then upper right and lowest temps at the lower left.  This is due to the unique design of this grill which provides an air flow pattern that achieves "top down" cooking on the left lower side.  

Kabobs - PG1000

Rotation I used while cooking

Finished Product

St. Louis Style Spare Ribs

So what are "St. Louis Style" Spare Ribs.  They are just normal pork spare ribs trimmed and with the brisket bone cut off.  You can see a great video of this made by Stuart Powell from Cookshack. 

This isn't the exact method I used for these ribs.  They were cooked on the PG1000 for about 4 hours and glazed with thinned out Blues Hog BBQ Sauce.  The ribs turned out great.  They could have used a little longer to aid in tenderness, but were quite good.  (It was dinner-time so I had to pull em off the smoker!)  I will repeating this recipe again with a little longer cook time.  

St. Louis Style Spare Ribs - PG1000

40lbs of Butt

My wife "volunteered" me to cook for all the teachers and staff at my son's grade school (Shout out to the awesome staff at Woodlands Elementary... GO EAGLES!).  I've gotten pretty comfortable cooking for family and small groups of friends etc., however a cook this big made me a little nervous!  Kelli had all the confidence in the world in me, I wasn't so sure.  After all, this was for "Teacher Appreciation Week"... I didn't want the message to be "We appreciate you so much we made you some sub-par BBQ."

Due to the volume of meat needed, I cooked on both my SM020 and my PG1000.  I prepped all 4 butts the same with rub and my usual injection.  Then cooked them all at 225 for about 15 hours.  Then I foiled them and put them in a cooler to keep warm.  I pulled them on-site at the school and put the pulled pork in a Nesco cooker with a little more rub and Smokin Okie's Finishing Sauce for some moisture. 

I didn't hang around to serve it up, but about 3 hours later there wasn't much in the way of leftovers.  I did reserve one of the butts for our family... and it was yummy!

So... my wife "volunteering" me helped me to be more confident in my cooking... I still get nervous cooking for people other than family though...

SM020 - Pork Butt

PG1000 - Pork Butt

The finished product - Ready to be served!

Beefy Ribs

And now for something entirely different... a relative failure...

I've heard of people making "Flinstone Style" beef ribs and them turning out well.  These were edible but not great.  I cooked these on the PG1000 after doing some basic seasoning.  I think my biggest problem was that my pit was running a little on the hot side and I cooked them a little long.  All the recs I got for cooking beef ribs was cook them LOW AND SLOW.  Low like 200-225.  Next time (if there is a next time) I will try a "beefier short rib" or just stick with pork ribs.

Beef Ribs PG 1000

Overdone I think...