Traeger Pro 575 Smoker on Sale at HD

Cany, do you leave the skin on all of your fillets? Any vertical cuts into the skin side or leave it uncut. Also, do you scale the fish before smoking?

Thanks to the both of you. I can see there are many different ways to get to your end result. I don't mind experimenting with different suggestions. I'm going with meat first. I got all my ingredients today for smoking ribs. I'm going to toss two racks on tomorrow after a lot of procrastination. Today was way too windy on the bay front to enjoy being outside tending a smoker. I have a detached garage, I know you cannot be in a closed garage while cooking but I'm thinking about putting it in the garage by the open door to use it as a wind break. Dumb idea? I truly don't think CO will be any issue. If I don't report the results of my first cook by tomorrow evening, you will know, it was a dumb idea.

Safety first. Plus you don’t want that smoke getting in the house. It travels.

Safety first. Plus you don’t want that smoke getting in the house. It travels.

An hour in and all's good. From the video, they recommend spraying every 30-60 minutes with apple juice after the first hour. Just did first spray and got a look. Not much going on visually. Checked the pellet bin and I'm not using many pellets at all. I thought I was going to use more after seeing how much was used doing the break in firing but the suggested temperature was 350 for thirty minutes and then 450 for twenty minutes and I did it on a very cold day. It wound up using a lot of pellets. At the lower temperature, I only used a cup or two so far.

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First hour.

I'm now five hours into it. From the Traeger video, they said cook by temperature instead of time. It was recommended to cook the ribs on the grill unwrapped until 170. I still have 16 degrees to go. I'm getting hungry and I'm still hours away. I hope I will be able to chew through these ribs. I set the original grill temp at 180 for the first two hours for more smoke flavor. Then I put it up to the Traeger recommended 225. That's probably the reason it's taking so long but I didn't think it would take this long.

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Five hours into it. They don't look too much different. They are at 154 degrees going to 170. At 170 they say to wrap them while raising the grill temp to 275 and go to 192 degrees. Then unwrap and make a "boat" with sauce. Take that up to 202 and they are done. I'm figuring I will be eating ribs for breakfast at this pace. But, I'm enjoying myself.

Then put the ribs back into the "boat", slather on the BBQ sauce and let em rip for about another half hour. YUM. BTW, they look fantastic.

I have, just cannot open the door too much to check. Temperature and times are thrown off.

Start simple (one item) and work up from there. There is a learning curve to get it perfect. I an not a fan of "fall off the bone" ribs, but not wanting to "rip" the meat of the bone. More of a gentle tug. Just my preference. Took me a while to get it that way.

I answered already.

Messed around with my Weber kettle today.

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Thanks Jaws. That's what I was shooting for but the ribs jumped in temp to 202 and the video guide said they were done at that temp. So I didn't have the time to allow them to go in for another half hour. That's why I decided to put them in the oven and quick broil the sauce on the bark. I probably could have taken them out of the oven just a little earlier.

I'm happy with the results for my first time but there are tweaks I need to do to make them better. There are hotspots on the grill that take their toll after many hours of no movement. That will be cured by reversing them during the cook. But overall, this smoker was very easy to use and the finished product was very tasty.

Question for all you rib cookers. I used cook ribs in the oven wrapped in foil. They came out okay but no deep smokey taste. When cooked, I used to think the ribs had to fall off the bone to be cooked right. I have read, that's not the case. From what I read, they should be nice and tender but you needed to bite into them and give a little tug to get a bite of meat. That's how these came out. However, a little meat did remained on the bone. What's the consensus? Clean bone or small amount of meat could be left on the bone?

The 3 hours you do at 230 also?

Yes. Smoking is all about "low and slow". I feel that if you crank up the temp, you stand a chance of getting dry meat. At times I've even let them go 4 hrs, wrapped at 230. The beauty of the pellet smoker is you don't have to babysit the fire. Set it for whatever temp you want and walk away.