Thank you for the reply, and I see your point. I guess that what I do
when vacuum marinating quickly with apple juice is preferable to me, in
the case of what I'm trying to do. I personally do not like meat that's
been marinated in papaya juice to cause it to become more tender, for
instance. To me, it becomes mushy and I'd prefer to chew a little harder
than to have the texture changed. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but I
just don't like meat that has been actually tenderized by a marinade.

In the case of the apple juice, I've found that an hour or so for
chicken or overnight for ribs gives an extremely moist meat with just a
little bit of a sweet taste that goes well with smoke. Maybe, since
apple juice is slightly acidic, a longer time would result in chemical
changes to the meat, but the shorter time just makes it juicy. I've
done no research into the changes in meat texture as a function of
acidity or papaya, so if anyone has more observations, I'd sure enjoy
reading about them.

Nonny

wrote:
On 11-Dec-2006, Nonnymus wrote:

Yesterday afternoon, I fired up the Bradley for its first cooking. I
chose 24 wings, which I vacuum marinated for 2 hours in apple juice,
garlic and a little salt. That's just a vacuum variation of my
traditional marinade, so outside of 2 hours vs. overnight, it wasn't a
variable. They were rubbed with EVOO just before placing them on the
racks.

The wings went onto 2 racks, set in the center at 240f, with 4+2 pucks
of apple for smoke. I did them 3 hours, which gave me an internal
temperature of 170f on my radio remote probe. I did it with the damper
almost closed off and with the used marinade in the water pan.

The results were absolutely excellent, and as if I'd been cooking them
this way all my life. The only thing I will be experimenting and
possibly changing is the outside of the wings. They were so moist that
they literally were dripping. The outside was tan from the smoke, but I
think it'd be a tad prettier if I'd finish them off on the grill for
about 10 minutes on a high direct heat to dry the skin a tad and give it
more of a scrunch when you bite in.

Today, I put 2 racks of ribs on at 200f with the timer set to look in on
them at 6 hours. They're cooking with 8 +2 pucks of Pecan with the
damper about 1/4 open to see if it gives them a bit more crust than the
wings. They were marinated in vacuum overnight in apple juice and some
spices I threw together. This morning, I ground on black pepper when
they were on the rack.

Something also I noticed that is really great about the Bradley, is how
well the racks fit into a dishwasher.
--
---Nonnymus---

Just a note here Nonny. While vacuum marinade is not to be discounted. One
must remember that the typical marinade is meant to cause physical de-
composition of the meat. While short periods of vacuum marinade wll
result in saturation of the meat with the marinade, it will not cause the
physical transformation of the cell structure of the meat. With this in
mind,
vacuum can be an important tool in your reperatoir.


--
---Nonnymus---
In the periodic table, as in politics,
the unstable elements tend to hang out on
the far left, with some to the right as well.