Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Gunslinger on August 28, 2004, 05:57:31 PM
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Need some help here from our BBQ crowed.
I'm going to smoke some ribs tomorrow in my Brinkmen el cheapo.
I Got a rub recipee that I'm allready using what I need to know is how hot to keep the coals AND how long to cook them to make them mouth watering and juicy. what temp are they considered "done" at?
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Do you have a thermometer on that bad boy? If so keep the temperature around 200 degrees and depending on the size/type of ribs about 3.5 / 4 hours of smoking (baby backs).
Apply the sop about 20 minutes before serving.
:aok
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Not from personal experience but my father does alot of BBQing, and I would agree with 200. From watching him that usually where he cooks all his BBQ at. I was back visiting my parents last week for vacation and my father cooked 2 pork shoulders for 10 hours and he kept it right around 200 the whole time. After it was cooked he shreded it and then made pulled sandwhiches out of it, best meal I have had in a long time.
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Yep, the common answers to that question will range from 200 to 220 degrees. I like 210. ;) Lower will just delay your cooking and won't hurt much if you stay close. Higher can dry your ribs out pretty fast so I don't let it stay up above 230 for very long. Lift the lid and let out some heat now and then until the coals die a bit.
When are they done? Ah, the eternal question.
I've heard two "methods".
1. "When the meat easily and cleanly separates from the bone." This is my method. I view this two ways.
You can slice off one or two ribs, stuff one in your mouth lengthwise, chomp down and see if the meaty part slides right off the bone into your mouth leaveing a clean bone in your hand. My personal test. ;)
Or, you can grab the last rib sticking out and give it a twist and a tug. It should slide out of the rest of the rack without a problem. Not as much fun.
If the meat hugs the bone in either test, you need more cooking.
If the meat shreds, separates in to strands and goes everywhere...oops, your a bit late. It won't matter, it will still be good. Use more sauce.
You should get a chunk of moist meat and a clean bone when things are ready.
2. The other method is the "droop" method. You pick up the slab in the middle with a set of tongs and hold it out level in front of you. The ends should droop down well below the middle. It's really the same thing, I think. The meat is not tight to the bones.
Most racks ~ 3 pounds and under will be done in ~4 hours at 200 to 220F. Baby backs will take maybe 25-30 minutes less.
Enjoy! Don't forget the beer! You can't smoke ribs without a beer in your hand.
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great, now I'm starving!
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No kidding.
Toad is my BBQ sensei.
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The next time you do it, give them a 4 hour brine soak before you rub them down. It is worth the trouble.
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Originally posted by Lizking
The next time you do it, give them a 4 hour brine soak before you rub them down. It is worth the trouble.
I remember reading about that but cant remember what it is and cannot find the site I was looking at.
What's a brine soak?
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220 inderect heat for about a 12 pack (temp may need ajusting for fast or slow drinkers)
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"Brine" is just another way of saying "marinade" if you ask me.
I marinade them sometimes but I haven't really seen it consistently be my best. Sometimes I don't marinade and the family says "these are your best yet". I marinade them and they say the same thing. Go figure. ;)
Here's on "brine" recipe; brine usually connotes salting so maybe that's a difference. I usually don't add much salt to anything. There's enough salt running around in the various things normally found at a BBQ feast to preserve your innards already.
Brine:
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons coarse salt
2 cups warm water
2 cups light beer (like Corona)
juice of one lemon
juice of one lime
3 tablespoons olive oil
Me? One of my favorites is real simple. Put the ribs in a heavy duty zipper freezer bag. Dump in some beer, apple juice, herbs de provence (teaspoon) and a clump of minced garlic. Sqeeze out the air as you seal it up and let it sit in the frig overnite.
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Actually, you brine them, THEN marinade them. Brine is water holding the maximum amount of salt it can.
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I've never "brined" them in that case. I've brined salmon and trout using a heavy salt solution and then smoked the fish, but never ribs. And my fish brine has spices and stuff in it to flavor the fish so it's pretty much a marinade too.
As I said, there's tons o' salt in BBQ sauce, French fries, coleslaw and other stuff on the table already. Us oldsters kinda watch that.
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Hey Toad I got another question for you this time requarding charcoal.
Ok maybe several questions:
How do you manage your charcoal?
Do you keep adding a few every so often if so how often?
Or do you just dump out the old stuff and add all new stuff half way through.
I've had them on for about an hour and a half now and I've been keeping pretty steady cept when I thaught the temp was dropping and I added more and had a flare up to about 280. I pulled the smoker off the charcoal pan and removed a few then left the door open for 10 minutes till the temp droped.
I've been checking it every 15 minutes or so.
OH
I decided to experiment a little bit for a marinade. Took some apple juice a bit of water. Some minced garlic and onions. then I added some of my montreal steak seasoning.
The rub was a premix but was a tad spicy (wife and kids dont like it) so I added some brown surger and garlic powder.
anyhow thanks for the help so far.
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Buy a chimney, and when the old coals are looking worn out, fire it up. In 10 minutes you will have a new batch ready to go, and you can dump them in.
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Originally posted by Lizking
Buy a chimney, and when the old coals are looking worn out, fire it up. In 10 minutes you will have a new batch ready to go, and you can dump them in.
you are talking to the self proclaimed king of creativity and ingenuity....;)
I actually made my own chimney out of two old coffee cans so adding them isnt a problem...the problem is maintaining a steady temp and WHEN to add? :confused:
I even made my own rib racks this morning by bending up left over grill inserts that I had in the garage.
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I put on wood chunks to maintain heat, and olny put more charcoal for big stuff.
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Originally posted by Lizking
I put on wood chunks to maintain heat, and olny put more charcoal for big stuff.
OK....I'm working on getting an electric set up for my brinkman but untill then I'm stuck guessing.
I'm cooking two racks of ribs some and some brauts. I tried a new package than I normally buy. It was $.20 more a pund but they actually came with a small section of what I'm guessing is a kinda of baby back. Its a smaller section after the rack that has really small ribs in it but is meaty as all hell. I cut them into smaller portions and made sure I put them on the top rack so they drip on the bigger racks at the bottom.
Anyhow, I'm crossing my fingers that everything turns out ok...I got guests coming over in about 2.5 hours I gotta get the chicken started...the corn on the cob wraped and grilled....and the baked beans brewin.
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First, relax. It's rare that anything coming out of the Brinkman is going to be bad. Some is better than others, but it's all usually pretty good unless you way, way overcook it or unless you come up with the marinade or sauce from the devil's anus scrapings in hell or something.
So, have another beer and relax. Doesn't sound like you got anywhere near out of bounds on marinade or rub, so it'll be fine. Just don't overcook.
Adding coal.
I have the big Weber chimney. I fill that baby and let it burn until all the coals are gray, no black ones. Drop them in give them a few minutes to settle down and heat the water and then stick my room temperature meats in, add the wet wood. Keep adding wood so as to have a steady light stream of smoke from the vents. Doesn't have to look like an oil well fire, just some whispy smoke coming out steadily.
Let it run until the temp drops to under 200. When that happens I load about 1/3 of a chimney of new charcoal and fire that off. It takes about 10-15 minutes for that to get going good and then I lift everything off and add this to the charcoal pan. The heat will rise again and I'll add wood again.
Repeat as necessary. If you load a whole chimney to replenish you will get a high heat spike in my experience. Just fool around until you find something between 1/3 and 1/2 that gives you what you want.
Generally, I reload ribs 2 maybe 3 times. Depends on the day. A cool 60-70 degree day will be 3, a hot summer 95 degree day will be two.
Enjoy.
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the ribs werent bad but i've done better boiling them or in the oven. I'm not sure how I did this but I completly dried them out.
I added coal pretty regularly...like 2 or 3 times and kept the smoke going but the top rack was completly dry.
I took them out after four hours and wasnt sure how done they were so I mopped them up with my favorite sauce and threw them on the grill for a few minutes.
The meat wasnt bad but it wasnt great. The taste was perfect....a good blend of smoke spice and sweet sauce.
I was dissapointed. The beans on the other hand.....hmmmm I had two helpings.
Thanks all for the help.
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If they were dry, did the meat "fall off the bone"? Or was it dry and tough and hard to get off the bone?
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Originally posted by Toad
If they were dry, did the meat "fall off the bone"? Or was it dry and tough and hard to get off the bone?
dry and tough to get off the bone.
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Most likely way overcooked then.
Ribs don't take as long as people think. I start getting curious as it sneaks up on the 3 hour mark. I start giving the end ribs a tug or two then.
Remember when you were a kid and you got the popsicle worked down to 1/3 of its diameter? You stuck the whole thing in your mouth and pulled out a bare stick leaving you with a lump of ice in your mouth?
Ribs should work the same way. When you can grab the end rib and twist it back and forth a few times and then pull it off the slab, you're probably there. Let it cool a few minutes and do the popsicle thing. You should get 80% of the meat off real easily and the meat should be moist. There'll just be a bit of meat hanging on to the bone.
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I'd like to propose a moment of silence in honour of Gunslinger's ribs.
Thank you for your time.
Carry on.
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thanks curval......
Toad, what should the meat itself look like. These were 4lb racks of pork ribs. The meat at the top, away from the bones was a little juicy but it was really really pink.
The meat down at the bones was very tough but looked more like pork chops.
Kinda sucks ruining $15 worth of ribs.
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Too long cooking. The best ribs place I know gave me their cooking method:
brine them for 4 hours
Marinade them overnight
Smoke them for an hour to burnish the surface
Cook them in the oven (wrapped in tinfoil) according to weight for another hour or 2.
Same thing for brisket, less the brining. They should come out crisp skinned, pinkest out to inner, and just be brown at the bone.
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Toad,
I have heard placing them in a coca cola marinade overnight makes em tasty too. Have you ever done this or is it just an atlanta thing.
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Dr. Pepper is good too. :aok
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I haven't used the sugar drinks as marinade. A lot of folks do that across the country; I don't think it's just an Atlanta thing.
For sweet ribs, I favor apple juice and I also will use about 1/2 apple wood on those.
Usually, I'm more the "unsweetened" rib type, so my marinades will be a beer base with seasonings.
Yeah, some folks do a quick smoke, wrap them in foil and finish in an oven. It's pretty easy that way and you have good temp control. Plus, the foil wrap sort of steams them, making them real juicy and helps with tenderness.
I'm not in that camp though. I like the texture I get without foil and an oven. They're still moist but they're not drippy... unless you slobber sauce all over them. I give 'em a light brush of sauce in the last 10 minutes and it pretty much dries down on them. Then I have warmed sauce in bowls for dipping for those who want to do that.
A thousand ways to BBQ and almost all of them good. You'll find your style.
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When cooking ribs or chicken slowly, you must keep a pan of water (i often use the marinade) in the smoker/grill.
It tends to moderate the heat and keep everything moist therefore eliminating the likelyhood of drying out the meat even if slightly overcooking.
My theory is low wet heat.