It sounds like you had a lovely time.

In Europe, we don't go in for the sweet bbq sauces that you have. We would marinate chicken, lamb or beef in a mix of olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, fresh or dried herbs, sometimes wine, garlic and onions,.....then grill. Or we would go Indian as in tandoori marinade, or Greek with little brochettes....its not complicated and always tastes good.

If we're cooking for a crowd, then I'd sous vide the meat first and finish on the bbq to be sure that chicken, pork chops etc are properly cooked in advance. Nothing worse than raw or dried out meat!

Burgers like apple and pork work well as they're very juicy with the grated apple.

Veggie brochettes are great.

Grilled fish...mackerel, salmon etc delicious. Keep it simple and serve it with a great sauce.

If you grill with a sweet sauce on the meat, guaranteed it will char. I like a dry rub and sauce later.
And then there is the Kansas City sort opf BBQ....with the pulled pork, smoked and then sauced, and beef done the same way. And there is also the style of further east, cooked with a rub but sauced with a very hot mayonaise based sauce.
Don't tell a purist, but I usually start the ribs wrapped in foil, layered with slices of onion and lemon in the oven.....cooked until done, then a quick crisp up on the grill brushing with sauce as they cook.
Not traditional but it works!

IC ... she has no clue on sous vide .... *grin*

JK

^_^

SV start is a very good idea.

IP BBQ isn't bad either.

Yesterday, interesting read: Bloomberg re. brisket:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-14/brisket-lovers-pay-a-premium-thanks-to-hi-tech-barbecue

dcarch

The best barbecue is cooked by someone else, at home, and all you have to do is eat it.

I was into smoking for a few years but have gotten away from it. Really got quite "into it"........but now it seems like too much work and way too much time!

Like Linda, I have settled on ribs done first in the oven with a rub then finished on the grill with a quick baste of sauce. More sauce on the side.

My favourite rub is Penzey's BBQ 3001 and my favourite sauce is a homemade sauce, tangy but not spicy. I add a splash hot sauce to my dipping sauce, DH is a wimp.

Love ribs on the Q and pulled pork in the crock pot, Carolina vinegar sauce on the side ......brisket not so much

Lindac, I've done pork sticky ribs a few times lately much like you described. Frustrated with dry ribs, I sort of made up a method of a combination of recipes I'd read online, put them into the oven (low heat) triple wrapped in foil with some prelim. seasonings. Then later in the day (much later), I gave them to DH and told him to brush with sauce (hoisin, honey, rice wine, garlic etc), turn, brush, turn, repeat until they'd really carmelized and almost charred. Delic.

We grill. A lot. Simply, with butter or olive oil, S&P. I really don't use many rubs or sauces on fish, meat, fowl although I can enjoy those if someone else has prepared them.

Real Texas barbecue brisket in Texas is divine. I'm not even a brisket lover, but it's that good. But done the way Ricky described, as was last night's dinner. :) I had noticed that brisket prices had gone up here, but didn't know that was why, Dcarch, that the machines were making it too easy. But then, skirt used to be the unwanted bit that they gave the vaqueros as part of their pay (hence fajitas), and now it's being served close to raw by fine dining chefs, and rarely in the butcher's case anymore because of the high demand (there's not much of it per beast).

When the small home electric smokers came out I considered getting one, as it would also give me a spare oven, but then I got a new kitchen with enough ovens and then sous vide circulators for more ovens and who needs that much smoked meat? I did try smoking in the oven. My oven has good air filters. I still had a major reaction to the chemicals coming out.

What I'm wondering about is real barbecue over a real charcoal/wood fire. I was being flip about the oven. I do make barbecue style. That's not the same thing as cooked entirely on the barbecue. I have considered the komodo or green egg, which I think will also smoke. I have no need to cook outdoors, however. A lot of people try to cook everything on an outdoor grill due to climate, but it just doesn't get that hot here except for a few days here and there. So, I'll probably heed Ricky's advice about letting someone else do it. :)

Thanks, everyone for your comments.

I don't know if I call what I make barbecue, but we do grill on the Big Green Egg a lot, but Kevin does not eat beef or pork, and so we mostly grill chicken, but sometimes fish - mostly salmon.

For me, Memphis barbecue is the worst - the sauce is almost all sugar, and I add very little sugar (if any) to my sauce, and I basically make a chili sauce that has very little in it besides chilies. I do like Texas barbecue, and it is the least sweet of any of the American styles, but I tend to cook more in a Mexican (and not Tex-Mex) style, although I make Algerian style roast chicken, which is also smoked.

When I grill outdoors, I frequently also grill vegetables, such as marinated mushroom, red bell pepper, onion, Brussels sprouts, etc. I also make garlic toast on the BGE, if we have that going, and I usually grill potatoes with the chicken. We cook the potatoes to 190°, and then I put them in a covered pan in a warming oven. They usually take about the same time to cook as the chicken, but sometimes less.

Hm... I guess what I had on Father's Day wasn't Memphis, then, because while there was sweet in the sauce, it wasn't sugar forward. I yet may go BGE sometime. :)

2Many, I don't know where your post was hiding, but I just saw it today. Thanks for the detailed instructions! I've saved them for if I ever have a covered grill. Interesting about the stacked. Might work in an oven?

I am blessed in that my son is a great cook ( learned a lot at momma's side and took it from there) and makes his own dry rub and shares with me. No idea what's in it, if I ask then I will know how to make it and not be gifted a jar whenever I need some.
I love all BBQ....the super hot....the extra sweet....the really smoky and that stuff with the white mayonais-ey sauce. I just don't like the stuff that is tough because it was not cooked in a moist enviornment....not the stuff that is just grilled ribs....slathered with sauce after it comes off the grill.

I do make really good bison ribs, but not barbecue. I rub them up with a tiny amount of very spicy barbecue sauce, but not enough to char (i.e., wet rub), and do them low and slow in the combi-steam oven, then sauce them for real before the last half hour. That is, they're barbecue sauce flavored, but it's a very different flavor from anything actually barbecued.

Linda, great plan on the rub!

Have a relative on my wife's side that makes a tremendous rub and he won't share it. Alas, he is now in prison - yeah I know - and will likely never get it ...

Where do you get bison ribs? They have got to be enormous!!
There is a nature preserve a few miles from me and when ti was established about 18 or 20 years ago, they stocked it with a few bison and elk.....and they have done so well and increased in numbers that they have to cull the herd every few years....but they send toe excess to another nature preserve.
bison is delicious but I would be hard pressed to tell it from beef, flavor wise....it's just the sheer size of things like a loin roast and the oddity of a hump roast that makes you look twice.
And that's just a teen ager!....bold....come right up to your car!

Hmmm...picture didn't show....

It's less available with the Amazon overlords, but they used to have a number of cuts of bison just in the case at Whole Foods. They have less now, and one must go to the butcher shop. I'm sure they're ranch bred domesticated bison. I don't know if that affects the size. I haven't measured or anything, but the cut ribs are pretty much the same size as beef ribs, just tastier. Domesticated bison taste like beef used to, back when it had flavor.

plllog, yeah, for some reason my posts don't always show up for days. Half the time I see them only on my phone, the other half only on the pc - for several days : ( I know you can cook great BBQ using a GBE, and know one other who does it with theirs. Neighbors across the street use an small off-brand ancient smoker as their grill for all grilling. Our most recent 2 grills are propane (sacrilege! ) but I just got tired of starting and tending to the charcoals (never used wood) and getting them just right. For some, that's part of the enjoyment. I find the taste to be almost as delightful (especially when using one of those pellet tubes for smoking), just the scent wafting through the neighborhood isn't quite as powerful. Would I ever buy another charcoal grill? Nada! You can buy smaller propane grills.

I think ribs, cooked long and slow, with simple dry seasoning (and a squeeze of lemon or lime in), is just the best. It's just great tasting, tender meat. Sauce on the side.

We had a great store-bought BBQ rib here for the longest time, locally made. It had that sweet BBQ sauce (which no, I didn't care for too much, but wiped it off best I could!). Recent years the meat was stringy, then eventually stringy with a lot of fat, and finally stringy, tough, chunks of fat. That's why I came here for advice, and got my ribs perfected! I do find every person has preferences for ribs - some cook with sauce (which I now don't care for), some prefer spicy, sweet, whatever. So, I make ours to suit us : )

Lars, in my book, you're grilling! If it's cooked on the grill, any grill, protein or veg, so far as my definition, it's grilled : )

Oh, too bad about the downhill ribs. There was a place near here which had these wonderful baby back ribs many years ago. They were mostly tiny flat bones with just a little meat--really baby!--smoked and then sauced with molasses fire. They were SO good. Sweet and made steam come out of your eyes, but you could still taste the meat...somehow they didn't burn out the taste buds. They were SO good! Then they changed the sauce to some kind of tomato-y glop that was more family friendly, and the meat to the kind of horrors you described, 2Many. Those are the ribs that made me apprehensive about that barbecue meal to begin with! Ugh!