Kevin Taylor
TVWBB All-Star
Well the big cook is over and in the books!
Funny, what started as a party for 300, quickly dwindled to 150. We cooked up only 32 racks of ribs and 30 lbs. of bonless skinless chicken breasts and I brought 30 lbs. of pulled pork.
Thanks to Jim Papajesk, who not only brought another WSM, but also helped during cooking and serving. He was invaluable and there is NO way I could have done this many people alone!
Some things I learned.......
Found a new rib supplier! We got the spares from Gordon Food Service where we requested 2 1/2 and down, cut St. Louis style. These came frozen and looked VERY thin when I picked them up. So thin, I thought of altering my cooking times. I decided to stick with my 6 hour cook time and I am happy I did. I swear these things plumped up when cooked!! Honest, just like a Ballpark Frank..it plumps when you cook it! They proved to be very meaty.
The trim was VERY nice and no messy tips to fool with. The price was an outstanding $2.40/lb. Now, that was at a discount but I just ordered another box and the price came to $2.70/lb. They are frozen, but I noticed no ill effects after cooking.
One other GREAT thing....the racks measure 16"!! That means you can easily get 3 to lay flat on each grate.
With loin backs back up to $3.87/lb. I will be using GFS for the remainder of the summer. They cooked exactly the same as my loin backs....foil and all!
I didn't skin the membranes. It was late Friday night before the ribs were thawed, so I just made slits on the bone side of the rack in between the bones. This worked out great and again didn't notice any ill effects when serving. Though I still prefer skinning, I am now comfortable with NOT doing it if I have to.
I was able to get 10 racks per WSM with NO squeezing. How?? I needed a few more rib racks so went to Lowes to buy some Weber racks. I noticed they had some CharBroil Rib and Potato racks for $8/rack....cheaper by $4 than the Webers. Even better..they can fit 8 half slabs of ribs!! Yes, by spreading the grooves apart, you can have 8 slots to fill. Now, the outside 2 were hanging over the water pan, so I didn't use them. I did use 6 slots(3 slabs), then placed 2 half slabs on top of these and 2 more half slabs on each side of the rack. What a sweet set-up! NO burning and they all cooked pretty evenly...though I did alternate top and bottom grates halfway thru. These racks are great...NOT the thickness of the Weber's but they held up fine and I envision using them more often.
I wasn't up to making gallons of sauce so I used Sweet Baby Ray's thinned with some pineapple juice. I also made a batch using it and added white pepper, black pepper and cayenne pepper....I simmered this for about 30 minutes and it came out great...VERY hot(that is what I wanted).
For the chicken I wanted something that tasted a little different than the ribs, so used Open Pit and added pineapple until I had a very thin baste. The folks requested NO BBQ sauce on the chicken so I used this instead. We got many, many compliments on the chicken. We just grilled it over lump charcoal so that shows if you cook chicken properly people will think it is the best they ever tasted!
We had 4 extra racks of ribs so I experimented by cooking indirect on the grill we had. VERY bad ribs..and I babyed them so they wouldn't burn! I now understand why lower temps are needed to make a superior rib. The indirect heat method just didn't work......for me.
OK, that's enough! Bordering on boring y'all.
The ultimate compliment was when the guests from Tennessee admitted(after badgering for me for 2 days! LOL) I cooked a better rib than they have ever eaten!
Funny, what started as a party for 300, quickly dwindled to 150. We cooked up only 32 racks of ribs and 30 lbs. of bonless skinless chicken breasts and I brought 30 lbs. of pulled pork.
Thanks to Jim Papajesk, who not only brought another WSM, but also helped during cooking and serving. He was invaluable and there is NO way I could have done this many people alone!
Some things I learned.......
Found a new rib supplier! We got the spares from Gordon Food Service where we requested 2 1/2 and down, cut St. Louis style. These came frozen and looked VERY thin when I picked them up. So thin, I thought of altering my cooking times. I decided to stick with my 6 hour cook time and I am happy I did. I swear these things plumped up when cooked!! Honest, just like a Ballpark Frank..it plumps when you cook it! They proved to be very meaty.
The trim was VERY nice and no messy tips to fool with. The price was an outstanding $2.40/lb. Now, that was at a discount but I just ordered another box and the price came to $2.70/lb. They are frozen, but I noticed no ill effects after cooking.
One other GREAT thing....the racks measure 16"!! That means you can easily get 3 to lay flat on each grate.
With loin backs back up to $3.87/lb. I will be using GFS for the remainder of the summer. They cooked exactly the same as my loin backs....foil and all!
I didn't skin the membranes. It was late Friday night before the ribs were thawed, so I just made slits on the bone side of the rack in between the bones. This worked out great and again didn't notice any ill effects when serving. Though I still prefer skinning, I am now comfortable with NOT doing it if I have to.
I was able to get 10 racks per WSM with NO squeezing. How?? I needed a few more rib racks so went to Lowes to buy some Weber racks. I noticed they had some CharBroil Rib and Potato racks for $8/rack....cheaper by $4 than the Webers. Even better..they can fit 8 half slabs of ribs!! Yes, by spreading the grooves apart, you can have 8 slots to fill. Now, the outside 2 were hanging over the water pan, so I didn't use them. I did use 6 slots(3 slabs), then placed 2 half slabs on top of these and 2 more half slabs on each side of the rack. What a sweet set-up! NO burning and they all cooked pretty evenly...though I did alternate top and bottom grates halfway thru. These racks are great...NOT the thickness of the Weber's but they held up fine and I envision using them more often.
I wasn't up to making gallons of sauce so I used Sweet Baby Ray's thinned with some pineapple juice. I also made a batch using it and added white pepper, black pepper and cayenne pepper....I simmered this for about 30 minutes and it came out great...VERY hot(that is what I wanted).
For the chicken I wanted something that tasted a little different than the ribs, so used Open Pit and added pineapple until I had a very thin baste. The folks requested NO BBQ sauce on the chicken so I used this instead. We got many, many compliments on the chicken. We just grilled it over lump charcoal so that shows if you cook chicken properly people will think it is the best they ever tasted!
We had 4 extra racks of ribs so I experimented by cooking indirect on the grill we had. VERY bad ribs..and I babyed them so they wouldn't burn! I now understand why lower temps are needed to make a superior rib. The indirect heat method just didn't work......for me.
OK, that's enough! Bordering on boring y'all.
The ultimate compliment was when the guests from Tennessee admitted(after badgering for me for 2 days! LOL) I cooked a better rib than they have ever eaten!
