Baby Back Ribs, 1st smoke

[Bradley S.]

Purchased 3 racks of what were suppose to be BBR's. Having eaten lots of BBR's all over the country and having looked at images of BBR's, I do not think I got BB's. There seemed to be a huge amount of meat on two of the racks, in fact I would have to say that the racks were every bit of 2.5 inches thick at the one end. It looked to me as if they had not been trimmed properly. They cooked up fine but took a bit longer than what I had expected, I used the basic babby back rib recipe from the Weber site. At the 3.5 hr. mark the ribs still had quite a ways to go, so I foiled them and added apple juice, at. The ribs were starting to look dry at the 4.745 hr mark they were finished, at which point I was going to brush them with sauce and grill for an additional 15 mins. However I was pretty much out of fuel and the ribs really did not need sauce. I used the minion method with 1 full chimney of charcoal lit with 1/2 chimney of charcoal. I kept the heat at 225-230 setting the vents as instructed, did not open the smoker until the 3 hr mark. Had to shake the coals a couple of times the last 45 minutes and open vents fully to get enough heat to finish, we are using a 22.5 cooker, next time I would use a third more coals to start with. We did noy have two whole coals left by the time we finished.

We were very pleased with the end result and can only get better.

 

[Jim McKelvey]

Bradley -
I'm not an expert, but I assume these were Costco or Sam's. I find they can be huge, often lopsided. I do like them though, and the everyday price is good. It is a challenge to cook them evenly - you might consider trimming and cooking the trimmed piece separate or freezing for another occasion. Overall, I prefer a well trimmed StL rib as it is easier for me to cook.

Best of luck - Jim

 

[Russ Harris]

They may have been loin back ribs, which look the same as baby backs as far as bone size but tend to have more meat on them. I actually prefer loin backs personally. More meat...can't argue with more meat.