I am not sure where I screwed up, and maybe its in a few spots.
I cooked some ribs on Sunday, 3 racks of back ribs. 1 bigger one at 2.8lbs and 2 smaller ones at 2.3 lbs. I prepped them in the AM. pulled off the membrane, rubbed them, everything is all good.
I set up my WSM 18" with the minion method, fired off a chimney, waited for them to ash over, and dumped them in the middle and had about 4 chunks of apple wood.
I filled the water bowl, not exactly how much, but about 2 pitchers full of HOT water out of the tap.
Put 3 racks of ribs on the top grate, closed it up and let it cook.
Since the probe thermometers don't really work well for ribs, I skipped using my Smoke.. However, the lid thermo had me dialed in at 250. (I'm thinking first mistake, I don't really know grate temp).
I was planning on doing the 3 -2 -1 method. I've done it before and its turned out great.
dome temp was always around 250. I was running the top open and the bottoms 3/4 open.
I checked the ribs at 2.5 hours and there was a lot of black. The big rack was fine for the most part, but still past brown in a lot of spots. I probably lost 1/3 of 2 of the small racks to being just too blackened/overdone to eat. I did wrap for about 1.5-2 hrs and then sauce and had on for another small bit. They were definitely done by the time they came out of the wrapping, probably earlier.
The big rack tasted good, and the meat was decently moist for the most part. The smaller ones had parts that were dried out and black and the salvageable stuff wasn't fantastic, but OK.
I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong besides getting too cocky here. I honestly thought I was golden temp wise and that I shouldn't be opening up.
Did I use too much sugar in my rub?
is 3 hours really too long before foiling?
was temp probably too hot?
The friends I had over told me it tasted great. They had the big one and some of a small one. So some of that is believable, but I definitely felt bad.
I cooked some ribs on Sunday, 3 racks of back ribs. 1 bigger one at 2.8lbs and 2 smaller ones at 2.3 lbs. I prepped them in the AM. pulled off the membrane, rubbed them, everything is all good.
I set up my WSM 18" with the minion method, fired off a chimney, waited for them to ash over, and dumped them in the middle and had about 4 chunks of apple wood.
I filled the water bowl, not exactly how much, but about 2 pitchers full of HOT water out of the tap.
Put 3 racks of ribs on the top grate, closed it up and let it cook.
Since the probe thermometers don't really work well for ribs, I skipped using my Smoke.. However, the lid thermo had me dialed in at 250. (I'm thinking first mistake, I don't really know grate temp).
I was planning on doing the 3 -2 -1 method. I've done it before and its turned out great.
dome temp was always around 250. I was running the top open and the bottoms 3/4 open.
I checked the ribs at 2.5 hours and there was a lot of black. The big rack was fine for the most part, but still past brown in a lot of spots. I probably lost 1/3 of 2 of the small racks to being just too blackened/overdone to eat. I did wrap for about 1.5-2 hrs and then sauce and had on for another small bit. They were definitely done by the time they came out of the wrapping, probably earlier.
The big rack tasted good, and the meat was decently moist for the most part. The smaller ones had parts that were dried out and black and the salvageable stuff wasn't fantastic, but OK.
I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong besides getting too cocky here. I honestly thought I was golden temp wise and that I shouldn't be opening up.
Did I use too much sugar in my rub?
is 3 hours really too long before foiling?
was temp probably too hot?
The friends I had over told me it tasted great. They had the big one and some of a small one. So some of that is believable, but I definitely felt bad.