British BBQ Society Forums

Hi
Had a great time BBQing on my UDS last year and just about to take her out of hibernation and give her a good clean out ready for spring. My UDS has been make with a Big Poppa kit and is a dream to cook on, gets up to temp real quick and once you find the sweet spot it hold temp like a dream. However, whilst I had some great tasting pulled pork and ribs I haven't been able to get a decent bark as it's always quite light in colour and soft rather than crisp.

I've experimented with a number of different rubs but the outcome is always the same, I do use a pizza tray to defuse the heat as I tried it once without the tray and found it difficult to control the heat as the fat and juices dripped on to the coals.

I'm looking to move on to brisket this year so any tips or pointers would be most welcome.

cheers
A.

Hi,

I've also got a drum made with a BPS kit and really like it and i'm also using a pizza pan as a heat deflector, but i've not really had a problem with bark.

If you're struggling with Bark, here are a couple of things that might be causing you problems:

Are you wrapping in foil? If so, maybe you're foiling too early.

Are you using home made or commercial rubs? Do they have much sugar in? if not, put a light coating of light brown sugar over the top to bake on the rub and set the bark.

You can always bang it in the oven on high for 5 or 10 mins at the end to crisp things up.

Hi, thanks for the reply's.

I only use my own rubs but tend to cut back on the sugar as I don't like them overly sweet but might up it a little to see if this makes a difference.

Tend to foil my pork when it gets to about 150-160F and use a 3-1-1 method for my ribs, but decided to go "au natural" and not wrap at all for my next couple of cooks to see what happens and work backwards from there.

If all else fails then in the oven she goes

If you have trouble finding the information I can share.