Precooked Ribs ???


 
J

John Furdyn

TVWBB Pro
After watching Bobby Flay, on the food network, smoke ribs for the senventy-fifth time, the other day. He said you could cook the ribs a day or two in advance, keep in the fridge, then reheat/finish them off, on the grill to eat. My question is what do you do with ribs after your done smoking them. If you wrap in tin foil while still hot, they soften up too much in my opinon. Do you let them cool on a plate, then wrap and refrigerate ? Any info appreicated.
Thanks John
 
I let them cool somewhat on racks on the counter, then vacuum seal them in ones or twos with doubled HD foil folded along the sharp bony edge so that I won't get holes poked in the bag material. I then toss these packages into an ice-water slurry to chill quickly, then refrigerate or freeze.

Many have good luck with reheating them on the grill, but I prefer the boilin' bag method. When it's about 30 minutes from time to eat, I set the cold sealed bags down into a big pot of water, bring the pot to a simmer, and the ribs are hot, fresh, and ready to eat in about 20 minutes. We did this just yesterday at my sister-in-laws house for Thanksgiving, using a turkey fryer on the back porch to heat the water so as not to take up kitchen space.

I buy the 8" rolls of bag material for ribs and chicken pieces, and for making 1-lb packets of pulled pork and chopped brisket for the freezer. While I prefer to let the meats thaw before dumping the packages into the water, I have often taken a slab of ribs or packets of meat straight to the boilin' pot with good results as well.

Keri C
 
Thanks Keri. I like the idea of quick cooling them, I believe that would keep them from getting "too" tender. I would think follwing your procedure would maintain the quality as close as possible to eating the ribs right after there done. Would you agree ? Also I suppose, I could wrap the ribs in hd foil, then put in the refrigerator, or freezer untill they cool off, then refregerate, for a day or two before eating. Thanks again. John
 
If you're wrapping in foil as opposed to vaccing, I wouldn't put the foiled warm ribs directly into the freezer or fridge - I would load a few big ziplocks with ice cubes and lay on either side of the wrapped slabs for a bit to get a quick initial chill going. Warm meat in a fridge or freezer can raise the temp of the unit more than you realize, causing the meat to cool more slowly than you would think.
 
Thanks again Keri, I don't have a vaccum sealer, so I needed an alternate way.I'll follow your advise with the ice cubes, and zip locked bags sounds good. Happy smoking !!!
John
 
We like to vac pack the extras and freeze them. We differ in the reheat method. We take the frozen vacpacked ribs and place them in a pot of water. We heat the water & vacpack at the same time.

The best thing in the world is being in Chicago, in January, -2degrees outside, and cutting open reheated vacpacked ribs. It smells like they just came out of the smoker. Instant summer!
 
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