What is the right cooking temperature for barbecue? It depends. Not all food should be cooked low and slow or hot and fast. Sometimes, a combination of both is best, as seen in the reverse sear and in sous-vide-que. Read more about 2-zone cooking and when to grill with the lid up or down for...
amazingribs.com
That's a pretty good explanation on different cooking temps. The thicker the piece of meat the less accurate the cooking times are going to be. Ribs are fairly predictable but brisket and pork but it may vary by 2 or 3 hours. One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started was cooking big pieces of meat to try to get it to be done when it was time to eat. Had multiple parties where there were 20 people waiting to eat while I sat by the smoker trying to will the temperature to go up. Finding out about what Meathead calls a "faux-cambro" was a game changer for me.
How do caterers hold cooked meats safely for so long? It's called a hotbox or Cambro and you can make a faux Cambro with a simple beer cooler. It's the secret to resting large cuts of BBQ like brisket, pork butts, and whole turkeys while keeping them warm and transporting them. Here's how to set...
amazingribs.com
Now I shoot for the big hunks of meat to be done 2-3 hours before I plan to serve them. Really brisket is better if it rests for at least an hour after you take it off the smoker. Once I totally overestimated how long a small brisket I made for a superbowl party was going to take and it was done at 6am. Stuck it in the cooler with a thermometer probe in it and served it at 6:30 PM during the halftime show. It dropped to about 130 degrees which is lower than they recommend for food safety but it tasted delicious and nobody got food poisoning. Definitely wouldn't do that intentionally, but it worked. 3-6 hours is a piece of cake. This year for the superbowl I took my ribs off a bit before kickoff and put them in the cooler and at halftime they were still way to fucking hot to slice without wrecking my fingers.
