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The judge at the Taylor rib contest told me my smoke ring was 'for show,' and I've been chasing bark ever since
Two summers back I drove out to Taylor, Texas for a small backyard rib contest with 22 teams. A judge stopped at my table, tapped my slab, and told me my smoke ring was pretty but the bark was thin as paper. He said the ring comes from the rub and the cook temp, but bark is what the meat does when you leave it alone. I dropped my wrap time by 40 minutes on the next cook and the difference was night and day. How do you all balance ring and bark without drying out the flat?
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shanenguyen1mo ago
Heard a pitmaster on a podcast say the flat dries out because people chase bark with heat instead of time. His point was that bark builds from the outside in, so if you crank temps to speed it up you cook the flat twice as fast as the fat renders. What worked for me was holding 250 to 275 the whole way and just letting it ride unwrapped longer. Spritz less than you think too, every time you open the lid you lose the heat that was actually building that crust. The ring fades a bit when you go that route but nobody at the table ever complained about a soft ring next to good bark.
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