Hey all, decided to fired up my new WSM 22.5 yesterday.
Went to Costco and got some baby backs. Tried to loosely follow the BRITU recipe...made a few mistakes along the way.
First off, although I don't think these were enhanced/processed ribs, the membrane was removed already.
Anyways, here's the ribs about an hour after rub was applied:
Since this was my first time, I followed what the BRITU directions said, so first I poured a chimney full of LIT coals into the ring, and on top of that I poured another chimney full of UNLIT coals along with 3 pcs of fist sized smoke wood.
While I now understand that this isn't the "minion" method that most follow, I wanted to try and follow the directions a bit.
I would later on realize that I used the wrong wood though, accidentally grabbing a bag of mesquite instead of applewood, cherry, or oak.
I assembled the smoker, and added about 2 gallons of water in the pan, and let her rise up to temps. Bonehead me, I wasn't watching that closely, and overshot the mark, stopping it at about 290 on the lid thermo. Messed with the venting a bit and got it back down to around 250, and put the ribs on the top rack.
The temps hovered between 230 and 250 for the next 2-3 hours.
At 3 hours I decided to foil 2 of the racks, and leave the third unfoiled.
I bumped up the temps to 275, and left them in for another 45 minutes, and took them out of the foil and brushed some Sweet Baby ray's and honey mixture on them for the final 45.
During the last 1.5 hours of the cook it was lightly raining but the skies were darkening and you could hear a major storm coming, so I had to push the smoker close to the house, under the second floor overhang.
5 minutes after I took them off, the skies really opened up. By my estimation, we got about 1.5 " of rain in a 45 minutes.
Anyways, here are the ribs:
For my first try at smoking, I think it was passable. The meat was tender, would pull cleanly off, but was not FOTB, or mush. There was decent bark on the the unfoiled rack (I think I'm going unfoiled from now on).
There was smoke flavor, but just not the right kind.
I will definitely switch to different smoking wood next time.
The fuel seemed to last the entire time, so I had no issues there, but I will use the minion method next time as well.
Other than that, are there any glaring mistakes that you guys see?
Thanks!!!
Went to Costco and got some baby backs. Tried to loosely follow the BRITU recipe...made a few mistakes along the way.
First off, although I don't think these were enhanced/processed ribs, the membrane was removed already.
Anyways, here's the ribs about an hour after rub was applied:
Since this was my first time, I followed what the BRITU directions said, so first I poured a chimney full of LIT coals into the ring, and on top of that I poured another chimney full of UNLIT coals along with 3 pcs of fist sized smoke wood.
While I now understand that this isn't the "minion" method that most follow, I wanted to try and follow the directions a bit.
I would later on realize that I used the wrong wood though, accidentally grabbing a bag of mesquite instead of applewood, cherry, or oak.
I assembled the smoker, and added about 2 gallons of water in the pan, and let her rise up to temps. Bonehead me, I wasn't watching that closely, and overshot the mark, stopping it at about 290 on the lid thermo. Messed with the venting a bit and got it back down to around 250, and put the ribs on the top rack.
The temps hovered between 230 and 250 for the next 2-3 hours.
At 3 hours I decided to foil 2 of the racks, and leave the third unfoiled.
I bumped up the temps to 275, and left them in for another 45 minutes, and took them out of the foil and brushed some Sweet Baby ray's and honey mixture on them for the final 45.
During the last 1.5 hours of the cook it was lightly raining but the skies were darkening and you could hear a major storm coming, so I had to push the smoker close to the house, under the second floor overhang.
5 minutes after I took them off, the skies really opened up. By my estimation, we got about 1.5 " of rain in a 45 minutes.
Anyways, here are the ribs:
For my first try at smoking, I think it was passable. The meat was tender, would pull cleanly off, but was not FOTB, or mush. There was decent bark on the the unfoiled rack (I think I'm going unfoiled from now on).
There was smoke flavor, but just not the right kind.
I will definitely switch to different smoking wood next time.
The fuel seemed to last the entire time, so I had no issues there, but I will use the minion method next time as well.
Other than that, are there any glaring mistakes that you guys see?
Thanks!!!
