I took advantage of the fine weather this weekend and pulled the smoker out of the garage for a nice smoking of barbecue ribs. As with all momentous occasions I thought it necessary to fully document the process so that in the ages to come people can look back at this and wish they too had dinner at my house on Sunday.
So here's how it all went down...
I started off in the morning by preparing the meat, in this case I used standard pork ribs and began the preparation by drying them off with a paper towel to get rid of most of the excess moisture from the packaging. I then proceeded to remove the membrane on the back, this allows more of the smoke flavor to seep into the meat.
Next I applied a basic dry rub to the meat (brown sugar, salt, cayenne pepper), wrapped them in foil and put them back in the fridge for a few hours.
Around Noon I started to prepare the smoker, in my case I use a vertical smoker with a water dish (this produces a steam affect and keeps the meat moist). I put a full chimney of charcoal on while I soaked the hickory wood chips, I also left a few unlit charcoal briquettes in the bottom of the charcoal pan, this keeps the heat going longer.
Once the charcoal was ready I filled the hot coals into the charcoal pan, added the hickory chunks (now thoroughly soaked) and placed the water pan above them. The meat went in and the smoke was quite thick for the first hour or so.
With the meat in and the smoker fully prepared I used the vents to regulate the temperature to around 225-250 degrees. After about 2 hours the temperature started to fall into the 200 degree range but I kept them going for another hour. If I were doing larger cuts of meat I would smoke them longer (5-6 hours) and have to swap out the charcoal, but because ribs are relatively thin cuts I thought 3 hours was a good amount of time.
At about the 3 hour mark I moved the ribs to the gas grill to finish the last 20 minutes, at this point the ribs were fully cooked and fairly tender, although they did not fall off the bone. (The only ribs that fall off the bone are the ones that are boiled Rob, and that's barbecue heresy, properly cooked ribs should come off of the bone cleanly, but not fall off). Another sign of properly cooked ribs is that when you cut into the meat you will see a smoke ring, that is a line of pink around the exterior where the smoke has permeated the meat. The other thing to look for is the meat should have begun to shrink back from the bone, exposing the tips of the rib bones. The gas grill is really just for applying barbecue sauce so I basted both sides of the ribs, let them cook for 5 minutes, flipped and basted again. I repeated this process about 2 - 3 times until there was a nice thick layer of barbecue sauce around the ribs.During this time I had also been preparing all my side dishes on the grill including potatoes (diced red potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper, and dill), veggie kabobs (sweet onions and bell peppers), and sweet corn (that is the pot on the side burner).
And here is the finished product, well worth the 4 hours it took to make.--Dan
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