I’m still getting the hang of our Smokin-It 2D electric smoker. This weekend, I got a little more ambitious and made two dishes: smoked mac and cheese, and two racks of baby back ribs.

The smoked mac and cheese is a pretty standard recipe: spicy four cheese roux, with an addin of 1lb of diced bacon, topped with a panko crust (coated with the bacon drippings!). I smoked the m&c for about an hour and a half, enough to pick up a lot of smoke flavor. K really liked it, so it passed!

I smoked the ribs for longer, almost 5 hours at ~250F. Well, the smoker preset was at 250, but the pit temps were actually a bit lower, roughly around 220-240. Either way, the hardest part is resisting the urge to prod and open the door – you lose so much temp each time! I was also worried about drying these out, so I tried spritzing each hour after the first two hours into the cook. Here’s a peek a few spritzes in:

Unfortunately, the ribs turned out dry, or at least drier than what I’m used to. The flavor was there, but it didn’t come close to our sous vide and broiled ribs. Maybe it’s because I did back ribs instead of the usual spare ribs, I dunno…I’ll need to go back and figure out how to do better.

At least the mac & cheese turned out well. I’m already thinking of follow-up recipes using this batch: pork rib fried rice, rib tacos, and even roti rolls. So of course, it’s not a total failure!

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