Well, I have my first WMS smoke in the books on my new 22" smokey mountain. I decided to do the "Competition Ribs" recipe from this site that looked so good. In retrospect, I should have done chicken or shoulder, because the word of the day was HOT.
I trimmed, removed the membrane, and rubbed down 3 slabs of baby backs the night before. Wrapped in plastic and set in the fridge overnight.
The next morning, I unwrapped and sprinkled some more rub before leaving the ribs out to come up to room temp as I got the smoker going.
The recipe said to start one chimney of charcoal, dump it in, cover with more charcoal (I used 10 lbs total). Let all charcoal get covered with ash and build the smoker. Mistake for me. I should have done more of a "minion" burn or at least built the smoker up earlier to "catch it on the way up."
Getting some hickory burning. This was just before putting it all together.
After assembling the smoker, the lid temp shot up past 400 and the needle was buried. I closed all bottom vents, had the water pan full, but it just inched down in temp very very slowly. I think after about 40 minutes with all vents closed and top open 1/4 - 1/2", I had pulled the temp back down to about 300, so I went ahead and put the ribs on, thinking they'd drop the temps a bit as well.
The ribs go on.
Yeow! The top temp on my Maverick is the bottom grate just above the water pan, the bottom temp is the top grate. I know I should have switched them to make more sense. I trust my maverick and have tested it. My temps all day were consistent with what I have read. My top grate ran about 20-25 degrees higher than the lid reading, my bottom grate ran about 5 degrees higher than the lid reading.
It stayed hot. Couldn't get it any lower without using the top vent and didn't want to do that with food in the cooker.
I believe this was after about 2 and a half hours. I decided to knock 30 minutes off the cook time due to the high temps.
At 3 hours they went into the foil.
My helper wanted to get in the pictures too.
I only cooked in the foil for about an hour. Slathered and grilled over high heat for about a minute apiece. So my total cook time was 3-1 on these babybacks. They were still over done, but no one really complains about over done ribs around here.
They came out pretty good. Sweet with a good balance in the rub. I didn't get much smokey flavor, I was a little light on hickory. Ribs aren't really my thing, though. I prefer pulled pork. That's next weekend.
It was fun and I learned a lot about my new cooker.
I trimmed, removed the membrane, and rubbed down 3 slabs of baby backs the night before. Wrapped in plastic and set in the fridge overnight.
The next morning, I unwrapped and sprinkled some more rub before leaving the ribs out to come up to room temp as I got the smoker going.
The recipe said to start one chimney of charcoal, dump it in, cover with more charcoal (I used 10 lbs total). Let all charcoal get covered with ash and build the smoker. Mistake for me. I should have done more of a "minion" burn or at least built the smoker up earlier to "catch it on the way up."
Getting some hickory burning. This was just before putting it all together.
After assembling the smoker, the lid temp shot up past 400 and the needle was buried. I closed all bottom vents, had the water pan full, but it just inched down in temp very very slowly. I think after about 40 minutes with all vents closed and top open 1/4 - 1/2", I had pulled the temp back down to about 300, so I went ahead and put the ribs on, thinking they'd drop the temps a bit as well.
The ribs go on.
Yeow! The top temp on my Maverick is the bottom grate just above the water pan, the bottom temp is the top grate. I know I should have switched them to make more sense. I trust my maverick and have tested it. My temps all day were consistent with what I have read. My top grate ran about 20-25 degrees higher than the lid reading, my bottom grate ran about 5 degrees higher than the lid reading.
It stayed hot. Couldn't get it any lower without using the top vent and didn't want to do that with food in the cooker.
I believe this was after about 2 and a half hours. I decided to knock 30 minutes off the cook time due to the high temps.
At 3 hours they went into the foil.
My helper wanted to get in the pictures too.
I only cooked in the foil for about an hour. Slathered and grilled over high heat for about a minute apiece. So my total cook time was 3-1 on these babybacks. They were still over done, but no one really complains about over done ribs around here.
They came out pretty good. Sweet with a good balance in the rub. I didn't get much smokey flavor, I was a little light on hickory. Ribs aren't really my thing, though. I prefer pulled pork. That's next weekend.
It was fun and I learned a lot about my new cooker.
