Dave Russell
TVWBB Honor Circle
I'm still down in Mississippi visiting my dad after his recent stroke. Thankfully, he's doing really well.
Anyway, my brother-in-law brought over three racks of Tyson spares that he wanted me to smoke on my dad's old OTS. He reminded me that my sister doesn't want rub on her's, tells me there's some cherry wood under the shed, and "no", when I asked him if he ever got a decent rib rack. The "cherry" wood didn't smell like fruitwood so I found a very small pecan limb that must've broken off in a recent storm.
Anyway, by the time I got the ribs skinned and found some matches, I realized I wasn't gonna have anymore than about three hours to smoke 'em. Didn't matter though, Dad's old kettle has been storm tossed and knocked over by the grandkids so much that I've given up on tweaking it any more for a better seal. It won't stay under 300* for any length of time and I didn't want to mess up one of my mom's pans. I reminded myself I didn't have that much time, so a HH approach was the plan and it was good that enhanced ribs don't take as long.
Well, some of the things I already knew were really reinforced by this cook. First of all, for all of you guys that think lump adds smoke flavor...well, it doesn't, unless you find pieces that aren't fully carbonized. My few very small pieces of pecan weren't nearly enough, and this was probably the only time I can ever remember that my ribs clearly needed MUCH MORE smoke.
Part of that was that they only smoked a couple of hours, though, and I knew that I needed to wrap 'em up and get 'em done. I started unwrapping and peaking about :45 later, looking for pull-back, but this is what I learned: Enhanced ribs will very likely be tender BEFORE pullback! So yep, I overcooked 'em a bit. Thing is, the ribs had SO much fat left on them that didn't render. That really didn't come as a surprise, but was that because they were enhanced? Or is that because they were cooked in only three hours? I think it was probably both, and I sure missed smoking decent spares in my Weber bullets!
Anyway, my brother-in-law brought over three racks of Tyson spares that he wanted me to smoke on my dad's old OTS. He reminded me that my sister doesn't want rub on her's, tells me there's some cherry wood under the shed, and "no", when I asked him if he ever got a decent rib rack. The "cherry" wood didn't smell like fruitwood so I found a very small pecan limb that must've broken off in a recent storm.
Anyway, by the time I got the ribs skinned and found some matches, I realized I wasn't gonna have anymore than about three hours to smoke 'em. Didn't matter though, Dad's old kettle has been storm tossed and knocked over by the grandkids so much that I've given up on tweaking it any more for a better seal. It won't stay under 300* for any length of time and I didn't want to mess up one of my mom's pans. I reminded myself I didn't have that much time, so a HH approach was the plan and it was good that enhanced ribs don't take as long.
Well, some of the things I already knew were really reinforced by this cook. First of all, for all of you guys that think lump adds smoke flavor...well, it doesn't, unless you find pieces that aren't fully carbonized. My few very small pieces of pecan weren't nearly enough, and this was probably the only time I can ever remember that my ribs clearly needed MUCH MORE smoke.
Part of that was that they only smoked a couple of hours, though, and I knew that I needed to wrap 'em up and get 'em done. I started unwrapping and peaking about :45 later, looking for pull-back, but this is what I learned: Enhanced ribs will very likely be tender BEFORE pullback! So yep, I overcooked 'em a bit. Thing is, the ribs had SO much fat left on them that didn't render. That really didn't come as a surprise, but was that because they were enhanced? Or is that because they were cooked in only three hours? I think it was probably both, and I sure missed smoking decent spares in my Weber bullets!
