Happy Traeger Day

Happy Traeger Day

My Traeger P22 Pro arrived last Thursday,  just in time to set it up, but not enough time to actually burn off and season the grill, I was out of pellets!. Let this be a lesson. Just like you can run out of propane, yes, you can also run out of pellets. I hadn’t realized how much cooking I’ve been doing lately. Fortunately, I access to pellets at work but man you will need to stock up more than I have to. This about the only problem I can foresee with pellet grills, cooking pellets are not nearly as convenient to replenish as is filling a propane tank. For those of you that want to stock up, here’s a link.

There was a pretty good turn out; it was actually better than I expected. We had one guy who nearly missed the entrance of the parking lot as we were setting up. He bought a grill before we were even cooking. All day, quite a few folks stopped by, mostly couples and some with kids. I think we averaged about 2 grills sold per hour, which is a lot better than I thought we’d do. Strangely enough, it seemed that everybody who stopped by already knew what pellet grills were but had never seen one.

We ran two grills, a Traeger P22 Pro (2018 model)at a higher temperature for the quick dine and dash items to include Carne Asada street tacos, jerk chicken, burgers and hot dogs on the Traeger PRO 575 with Wi-Fire technology we smoked a brisket, short ribs and my 1,2,3 Memphis ribs. Everyone really liked the Traeger App on the iPhone.

My entry in the cook-off was the 1,2,3 Memphis rib recipe. Here’s a clip of that. This was my very first time cooking 1,2,3 ribs and, to prepare, I watched one video a clip from some dude in Missouri that does this stuff competitively. My ribs didn’t look like his, but they were very delicious. In the spirit of Traeger Day, I used only rubs and sauces from Traeger.

Traeger Accessories

Traeger may have invented the pellet grill but they make a lot more than just grills. The folks who came into the store and bought grills were amazed at how much extra stuff Traeger offered. Under their new ownership, they have really expanded the market to include just about every little thing you could possibly imagine. They have the usual suspects, like grill covers, grilling tools, BBQ printed butcher paper, collapsable workspace shelving which is kind of specific to different grill models but they have opened up a whole accessory line to all kinds of lifestyle products. Some of them which are as nifty as they are hilarious, like this grilling swiss army knife!

They have covers for every grill they sell. They make about 12 different flavor pellets, which I’m currently making a video to explain all the different flavors and how to pair them up with different foods for the grill. Check our YouTube channel for recent videos.

One thing I’ve made good use of recently is a rib rack. The rib racks suspend the ribs on their side above the grill surface to allow the ribs to cook evenly without flipping them and because you’re making use of some of the vertical space in the grill, you can fit more meat inside the same grilling area.

Making 1, 2, 3 BBQ Ribs

Step #1

For the binder, I rubbed the ribs with Nathans™ spicey brown mustard on both sides. Once the ribs are fully coated I layered a mix of 3 Traeger Rubs on both sides of the meat. The first layer was the Pork and Poultry, which is a sweet rub with apple and honey. Next, I hit it with a coat of Traeger’s Beef Rub which has some molasses and chili pepper and finished off the rubs with a dusting of Traeger Rub, a mix of garlic and chili pepper. Once the meat has been rubbed, I set it out to rest on a table until the meat starts to sweat, then I centered it on the lower rack, meat side up, with the grill pre-heated to 275°F.

Step #2

Let it cook. You need to get the meat temperature to 185°F. You’ll be able to make a steady climb to 168°F or so in about 1 hour 45 minutes and then you’ll be stuck around that temperature for a while, maybe 15-20 minutes, this is called the crutch. It takes a bit of energy to get past it. When you start climbing again, flip the ribs over. Don’t turn up the heat expecting to speed through the crutch. Once you’ve broken the crutch barrier, you’ll start climbing again quickly to 185°F. At 185°F, remove the ribs from the grill and let them rest for 5 minutes then, in double layer foil, wrap the ribs adding 4 tablespoons of salted butter, a ½ cup of water and a ¼ cup of bourbon. I used whipped butter because it’s all I had but you can use any kind of salted butter and I used Jefferson’s bourbon. Again, you can use whatever bourbon you want to. After you wrap them up, put the ribs back on the grill until you have reached 204°F to 208°F then remove from the grill.

Step #3

Remove the foil and lay out your ribs. Let them rest for about 5 minutes. This is the part where you sauce the rib. I used Traeger’s Sweet Heat. Apply a liberal amount of sauce to cover all of the ribs and then place back on the grill. I like to cook until the sauce is tacky and then I turn the grill up to HIGH to just add a little char to the high edges.

Obviously, there is a 4th step to these ribs...eating them and showing off! I was skeptical about using the Traeger Rub Spices. I made a few chicken dishes using them the week before and they all seemed a bit strong, however; knowing that going into the cook-off, perhaps I used a better ratio because the ribs were really good. The winner of our cook-off was decided by who’s platter was empty first. According to these rules, I didn’t win but, my competitor plated his ribs 30 minutes before me. Errr. Maybe next time.

I do have a step-by-step remake of this recipe coming out this weekend but the video was not completely ready by this publishing. Check out our Facebook page for a link to the tutorial video.