There’s going to be a point to this, I promise.
I didn’t do them side by side, I didn’t take any pictures. I just made a lot of ribs.
For years and years, I’ve made them on the BGE. This season, I started doing them on the Weber Kettle. Not because I was unhappy with them on the Egg; they’re great! But my Egg is 18”, and the Kettle is 22”, and I wanted to do something different I guess.
With both smokers, I’ve used the standard setup. The BGE gets set up as indirect, diffusion plate, FOGO lump charcoal, wood chunks, 250°; the Weber gets setup with either S&S or the stainless heat shield/charcoal holder and water pan, B&B briquettes, wood chunks, 250°. I follow a straightforward rub/spritz/ignore routine, with no wrapping. Sometimes I rub/salt the night before, sometimes right before cooking; whatever that nuance is, for me it’s outweighed by whatever is more convenient that day. The cooker comes to temp, the ribs go on, i spritz with apple cider vinegar/apple juice mix, again at one hour, again at two hours, and then I let them go until they pass the bend test. (I used to let them go to 203° measured between the middle ribs, but that is too well done, that is fall off the bone.) Then it’s brush with sauce, 15 minutes, and serve.
There is no difference in the finished product. And there shouldn’t be. The heat sources vanish, once they’re hot enough to cook over. The wood chunks give the same smoke. The temperatures are the same, measured with the same thermometer. The ingredients are all the same. All the ribs come from the same place (Cheshire Pork), all the rubs and sauces are the same (either Meathead’s recipes, or his commercial rub & sauce, depending).
My point is this: they both work. The differences lie in convenience and sets of compromises. There is no hierarchy, there is no advantage, there is nothing that matters except the food. It either tastes good, or it doesn’t. Everything else is just posturing.
I’m not extrapolating these results to other cookers within the same family of charcoal-based cookers (Hasty Bake, PK, Aussie Walkaround, Good One, Pit Barrel, etc) but I would hypothesize they would be the same; I’m not going to test it, that’s for Max! And these results probably don’t extend to pellet cookers and stick burners; those are different heat and smoke sources, and should be different.
There are lots of valid considerations to be made when choosing a cooker. But don’t lose sight of the fact that in the end, it is just a tool. The food comes from the cook, not the tool.
I didn’t do them side by side, I didn’t take any pictures. I just made a lot of ribs.
For years and years, I’ve made them on the BGE. This season, I started doing them on the Weber Kettle. Not because I was unhappy with them on the Egg; they’re great! But my Egg is 18”, and the Kettle is 22”, and I wanted to do something different I guess.
With both smokers, I’ve used the standard setup. The BGE gets set up as indirect, diffusion plate, FOGO lump charcoal, wood chunks, 250°; the Weber gets setup with either S&S or the stainless heat shield/charcoal holder and water pan, B&B briquettes, wood chunks, 250°. I follow a straightforward rub/spritz/ignore routine, with no wrapping. Sometimes I rub/salt the night before, sometimes right before cooking; whatever that nuance is, for me it’s outweighed by whatever is more convenient that day. The cooker comes to temp, the ribs go on, i spritz with apple cider vinegar/apple juice mix, again at one hour, again at two hours, and then I let them go until they pass the bend test. (I used to let them go to 203° measured between the middle ribs, but that is too well done, that is fall off the bone.) Then it’s brush with sauce, 15 minutes, and serve.
There is no difference in the finished product. And there shouldn’t be. The heat sources vanish, once they’re hot enough to cook over. The wood chunks give the same smoke. The temperatures are the same, measured with the same thermometer. The ingredients are all the same. All the ribs come from the same place (Cheshire Pork), all the rubs and sauces are the same (either Meathead’s recipes, or his commercial rub & sauce, depending).
My point is this: they both work. The differences lie in convenience and sets of compromises. There is no hierarchy, there is no advantage, there is nothing that matters except the food. It either tastes good, or it doesn’t. Everything else is just posturing.
I’m not extrapolating these results to other cookers within the same family of charcoal-based cookers (Hasty Bake, PK, Aussie Walkaround, Good One, Pit Barrel, etc) but I would hypothesize they would be the same; I’m not going to test it, that’s for Max! And these results probably don’t extend to pellet cookers and stick burners; those are different heat and smoke sources, and should be different.
There are lots of valid considerations to be made when choosing a cooker. But don’t lose sight of the fact that in the end, it is just a tool. The food comes from the cook, not the tool.
