I rarely smoke foods anymore but do cook on a pit. I have a smoker that I will smoke some appetizers and cold smoke stuff like peppers, canadian bacon, buckboard bacon, salt and other things.
Appetizers with bacon do well in the smoker.
I cook large cuts of meat on my pit. My goal when burning in my reverse flow pit is to see no smoke at all, I won't go as far as using a burn pit and shovel coals though.
Old barbecue was cooking indirectly off of hardwood coals, smoke flavor was a by product of this method.
I only cook ribs, pork butts/picnics and large cuts of beef on the pit, and the occasional sausage. I don't like loin and Chicken off of the pit.
When I do ribs on the pit, it used to be a modified version of the 3-2-1 method at 250°F
5- 6 hours . Depending if I was doing Spares trimmed St. Louis or Baby Backs.
I started doing Ribs on an open fire pit with my Schwenker at about two hours, and I love them. I do the bend test but pull them before the bend is completely vertical.
For Ribs I am not keen on the temp probe for doneness (not a word) so I don't probe, I also don't believe that pull back is an indication of doneness (not a word).
There Is so much parroted information out there like "Fall off the bone tender" I call BS, I want my ribs to taste like meat, not mush. Having a bite through like steak. I don't want the entire hunk of meat falling off the bone and slapping crap on my chin. I want to chew the meat off of the bone and control what goes in my mouth.
Another thing that peeves me is how everyone says ribs are done when you get a good pull back, to me if you get a lot of pull back you just cooked your ribs to death or steamed them. Again this is all my personal opinion.
Pic#2 below has pull back but I noticed that you get more pull back when you foil the ribs, If I do decide on doing the ribs on the pit, I don't foil anymore because I think it changes the texture of the meat.
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