After seeing my hero, Aaron Franklin, smoking some sausages, I thought, I have to give this ago. For Christmas, I got a Wray Organic Voucher, so off we went to spent that and picked up some organic sausages to smoke.

At around 4:20pm, I put the sausages on indirect heat and the veggies (potatoes, onions) on direct. The pit was already going from the previous cook (ribs) and was reading about 280F (~138C). An hour later, I took them off the pit and the potatoes internal temperature was 100C.

How did they taste ? Delicious. Even my wife said these taste way better than fried. I think we've found the only method we'll use for sausages from now on. Only takes one hour from start to finish and definitely well worth it.

Ribs ... one of the thing I see a lot of American's smoke and technically speaking, I'm not much of a rib guy, probably because they've always been sloppy to eat and little meat on the bone. However, these are Aussie Spare Ribs and what sort of pitmaster would I be if I didn't try them.

So, it started with the rub. I figured I'd go with something sweet and used the following:-

1 Tablespoon of Black Pepper
1 Tablespoon of Salt
3 Tablespoons of Brown Sugar
3 Teaspoons of Cumin
3 Teaspoons of Paprika

I was going to add some Chilli Powder, but my wife doesn't like it hot, so I thought, let's keep it simple. At 11am, the rub went on and then the ribs went back into the fridge. At 1:15pm, they came out of the fridge and I left them out to get to room temperature, whilst I started up the fire and the ribs went on about 2:10pm.

About 30 minutes later, my wireless probe in the potato started going nuts, beeping and flashing. When I got to the BBQ, the ribs looked like they were cooked already. I don't know what my cook temperature is, as I don't have a rangehood temperature gauge yet, but I'm guessing it was hot. I then foiled up the ribs and spritzed them with lots of apple cider vinegar. My wife had a candy thermometer that went up to 300 F, so I tried it on the Smokey Joe and it said about 220F (~104 C), which isn't that hot I thought. At 3:35pm and a temp of 235F (~113C), I spritzed the ribs again.

At 4pm and a temp of 260F (~126C), I spritzed again. At 4:20pm, I took the ribs off to rest.

Unfortunately, when it came time to eat them, they were a little burnt. Okay ... a lot burnt. There were some bits of meat under all the charcoal that tasted alright, but mostly burnt and so my wife didn't like them at all.

Ribs fail.