Extreme method to bring temps down

[Rick Jones]

I tried the following method out of desperation, and it worked quite well so I thought I'd share it here. I told Henry Joe Peterson about it at the West Coast BBQ Championship in Fairfield, California over the weekend, and he used it successfully as well when his temps got way out of control.

I was cooking 6 slabs of ribs at work for an end of the month barbecue, when I noticed a strange sizzling sound coming from one of my WSM's (I had been away from them for around 1/2 hour). The door had fallen off, and my temp was right around 375! I shut everything down, but it was way too hot to bring the temperature down by starving it of oxygen.

Anyway, I took the ribs off the bottom rack, and piled a whole bunch (maybe 3 pounds) of ice directly on the bottom rack. It took maybe 5 minutes for the ice to completely melt into the water pan, but by the time it did my temps were around 225 again and I actually opened up the bottom vents again. One thing to remember is to make sure that you have room in the pan for the ice. I did get a little spillover from the melting ice, but not enough to stir up the ash or adversely affect the food.

The ribs turned out great, by the way.

Rick

P.S. Can we name this "The Jones Method"? An alternate might be "Rick's Panic Attack".

 

[Tony Ventura]

Cool!!!

Tony

 

[Stone]

I take the lid of an wave it very gently over the open smoker to get the hot air out. But I've never had that much of a spike.

 

[Mordechai Striks]

stone...if you do that for too long you prob will end up stoking the coals from all the added air.. and major spikeage.......

 

[Rick Jones]

I've seen the method that Stone has described referred to as "burping". I've done it (hell, probably everyone whose ever owned a WSM has), and it does work to bring the temp down briefly, but like Mords says leaving the lid off will end up causing way too much draft and temps will go through the roof. Similar to what happened when my access door fell off.

Rick