First Spareribs a Success


 
J

John Vale

TVWBB Fan
Up to this point I had only cooked Baby Back ribs on the WSM. Today I tried St Louis Style spareribs and the results were excellent.

I cooked a single 2.97 lb rack of Swift's St Louis style ribs packaged in Cryovac. I used Dr BBQ's championship ribs recipe, including his rub, sauce and glaze.

This recipe specifies a pit temperature of 275. The total cooking time was 5 hours. The ribs initally cooked for 3 hours and them were put in foil for 90 minutes. After the foil, the glaze we applied and the pit temperature was raised to 350. The ribs cooked at 350 for another 30 minutes and were done. The meat was moist inside and had a nice dark and firm bark on the out side. Temperature control was provided by the ever vigilant BBQ Guru.

The only negative was the use of the new Kingsford charcoal. Apparently it is very responsive to added input air provided by the Guru fan and the temp would zoom up very quickly and over shoot the set point by 4 to 6 degrees and the Guru would have to struggle to get the temp down and it would drop quickly and end up 4-6 degrees lower than the set point. With the old Kingsford the Guru had no trouble maintining the desired pit temperature.
Rather than fool around trying to better adjust the Guru I am going to find a better fuel - probably a lump with proven and consistent burn characterisics.
 
4-6 degrees is not something to worry about John. I'm going to guess that your guru has the damper on the blower. Have you tried throttling back your airflow using that damper? It might help. Also, if your WSM was in the sun then it could run a bit hotter.

Glad your ribs were a success. I've been thinking about putting some spares on soon because it's been too long since I've had them.
 
I just cooked a Boston Butt and bought a new bag of Kingsford. I had a lot of trouble regulating the temp and when I added some additional briquettes (SP?), the temp soared and I really had trouble bringing it down. I didn't know that was a characteristic of the new Kingsford. I need to research the guru, because it sounds like that is a great tool for the WSM. Thanks and glad your ribs were a success!

Steve
 
I've got six slabs of back ribs going on my WSM right now, and am using the New Kingsford for the first time. So far, so good, with fairly steady temps at each setting, though it does seem very sensitive to opening or closing vents.

Cheers,
Michael
 
I am going to try lump charcoal next. Today, I bought five 22 lb bags of Wicked Good Weekend Warrior Blend which has a good reprutation for long and steady burn rates. I had the feeling that I was going to have to do a lot of experimenting with draft and vent adjustments to get the new Kingsford under control and I just don't want that hassle. I bought the BBQ Guru because I would rather spend mt time on cooking techniques and various recipes rather than tending the fire.

John
 
You'll enjoy using lump. I have not used briquettes since I started using lump. Recommend that you install a second grate in the charcoal ring, otherwise the small pieces of lump will fall through. Also, break up the fairly large pieces, they don't seem to burn consistently as the other pieces.

Ken
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

 

Back
Top