How to smoke ribs alongside my brisket

[Holeigh Reilly-Hynes]

Hey guys, I'm ready to try my second smoke of brisket with the changes you all suggested a few days ago. This time I would like to cook some pork ribs at the same time. If I'm cooking my brisket at 250 (and resting for say 3 hours) approx how far in to the smoke should I put the pork ribs in?

 

[James H]

so the challenge is that the smoke for the brisket will not be needed by the time you put the ribs on. let's say you have a 12 pound brisket and baby backs...I think there are two options with some time guidelines which may be variable (brisket should take around 15 hours and ribs should take around 4-5 hours...

1) You can wrap the brisket in foil or butcher paper after the brisket temps hits ~165. When you think you have another 2-3 hours till brisket is done then you can add more smoke wood for the ribs and put them on. Pull the brisket when it is done (~200) and let the ribs take the additional hour or two to be done while the brisket is resting.

2) You can just complete the brisket and pull and wrap in towels in a cooler. Then move the cooker temp to 275ish and put smokewood and ribs on. they should take around 3.5 hours. Your brisket will still be fine resting. When ribs are done you can pull and slice along with the brisket for serving.

These are just general guidelines but should get you there. Looking forward to other suggestions.

 

[Rich G]

Holeigh, you have great input from James. One other option, if you are planning to wrap your brisket in foil, is to just move it to the oven at whatever temp you want (it's not getting any smoke anyway, so you're just after heat to finish it up), and then you are free to do whatever you need to with the ribs. Of course, once wrapped, there's no reason you couldn't keep it on the WSM as long as you have the room you need.

As far as timing on the pork ribs, what kind of ribs (baby backs or spares), and are you planning to wrap those? Those two things will affect how long you need to plan on cooking the ribs, and, therefore, when you should put them on the WSM (oh, and, when do you want them ready?)

You can definitely make this work, just takes a little planning. One thing that I usually do to plan my cook times is to work backward from when I want to eat. So, if I want to eat at 6p....... give myself a buffer hour, spares take ~5.5/6 hours at 250, I'd put them on at 11:30a and I'd be pretty darned sure they will be ready to eat at 6p.

You can definitely get this cook done!! Let us know if you have more questions, and also how it goes!

Rich

 

[Holeigh Reilly-Hynes]

Thanks heaps guys. So brisket is on, and decided I'm going to put the ribs on 5 hours before we want to eat regardless of where the brisket is at. It's only only really small brisket cut so I have a feeling It will be resting by the time I put ribs on, if not foiled, which should mean putting extra wood on for the ribs won't affect anything.

Correction: it's spare ribs that I bought, just did a quick google. They definitely don't look super meaty compared to some of the pics I have seen on here (although everything is bigger and better in America than Oz!)