I am doing a cook for about 50 people in a couple weeks here at work. The food I am cooking will be ribs and brisket, sides will be catered. I'll be cooking on site and have a WSM 22 that I will be using to cook the ribs. My question is this, how many racks of ribs can I fit on my cooker to max it out? Would you cook baby backs or St. Louis and what method of placement would you use for each? I prefer not to roll them into circles but will if that is the best option. Thanks for any and all help!
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If I were you I would hang them. But then you have to buy the kit for that, but it would be nice to have for future cooks.
You an always use the coil method, I have never had any issues when I do that in my little KJ Jr. You would have enough room in the WSM if you coil them all. -
How about this? If I buy (2) I can fit 6 racks on the top grate and another 6 on the bottom.
https://bbqguru.com/storenav?Categor...SABEgKtCvD_BwELast edited by Hulagn1971; October 26, 2018, 10:10 AM.Comment
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Craigar exactly. I bet if they made a larger one you could get 9 racks on one rib ring. 18 total for top and bottom. That would be a killer set up.
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I've used rib racks on upper and lower grate to cook 12 St.Louis before. I rotated them in the racks a few times and switched upper with lower for an even cook.Comment
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I am curious about how you do this. Are you are just reaching into it one grate at a time? What do you use to set the gates on?Last edited by lostclusters; October 26, 2018, 11:05 AM.
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I only have a kettle, but use the Weber rib rack to do up to 5 racks of STL or baby/loin back ribs. That is with the SNS on there, so you would have no issue getting a rack a little longer than the 5 slot Weber one to put more than 5 on each level of the WSM 22. So easily 12 total racks if you use rib racks.
Note that the ones towards each end of the rack may need to curve a little to fit the contours of the WSM, but they do fine.
I can see how if you had hanging hardware like the PBC uses, you could probably hang 16 racks of ribs on a WSM 22, as I've seen people hang 12 on the 18" diameter PBC.Comment
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If it helps, here is how 3 racks of loin back ribs from Sam's club - about 3 pounds or so per rack (almost 10 total) fit on a 22" kettle grate, using the Weber rack, and laid flat at the end with sauce. As you can seek, with the WSM and not losing 1/3 of the grate to the Slow 'N Sear, you could do a lot more. Looking at the pictures, even if you bought the Weber 5 slot racks, you could fit another slab or two on the grate at either end of it most likely.
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You should be able to easily fit three racks laying flat per grill grate. I have a hovergrill and have cooked nine racks in my 22"WSM. It all comes down to how many grill grates you want to buy, or borrow, and add. If you got creative and spaced the grill grates with bolts I think you could easily fit 15 racks or more.Comment
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So, if I can get 6 on top and 6 on the lower grate and cook at 250-275 how long do you think the cook would take with baby backs?Comment
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Thanks EdF I wasn't sure if due to capacity it would take longer or not. Do you think I should rotate top to bottom halfway through the cook?
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I bought a couple of these
Traeger Grills BBQ Rib Rack (BAC354) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BH3SFGO..._kzj1Bb7H9JDH3
so along with my mods I can cook 24 racks. I lay an extra rib on top of the 8.
remember if ya do wrap em then you can stack them on top of each other when the time comesComment
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I've done 16 smaller racks of ribs before on my WSM 22 using rib racks. I could have fit more but I was also cooking a leg of lamb and a rib roast at the same time. I have a number of smaller rib racks that I use (link below) so that I can fit more racks of ribs into the corners of the smoker. As EdF noted, I would expect the cook time on the ribs to be higher, especially if any of the racks of ribs touch each other. To avoid having the racks of ribs touch while using rib racks, I often use multiple rib racks on the same racks of ribs (although I usually stagger the placement of the rib racks a bit).
On a side note, is there some other word that folks use when referring to rib racks? I've often had difficulties discussing rib racks and racks of ribs in the same thought without causing folks who don't smoke or grill some confusion.
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I've decided to order two sets of rib rings. One for the top grate and one for the bottom. I'll be able to cook (12) racks total. The cook will be next Friday so I'll keep you all updated on how it all works out.Comment
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here's 6 racks of back ribs on the WSM 22 .... as you can see, they fit very easily. I think I could do more like 12 racks of ribs if I had rib racks.
The bottom grate - at the time I only had a Maverick Et-732, so I used a potato to hold my temp probe for the bottom grate
The top grate
And here we are several hours into the cook .... you can see the ribs on top and bottom.
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Here is how I do 8 racks on a Weber kettle with a Smoke EZ insert with hooks from PBC
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SmokeytheBare do you put your charcoal in the middle of the ring with this setup or use the snake method? I have the 26.75" version of the Smoke E-Z.
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