Ribs on the 18" WSM

[Neilly C]

My pork spare ribs have to be wrapped in foil a couple hours to keep the top loin meat from drying out, despite having the temp right at 225. It works, but it's a pain. Am I just being too picky, or am I doing something wrong? I love me some loin meat on my ribs.

[ecowper]

Personally, I’d cook them hotter and faster .... like 250-260 .... I find that lower/slower dries out my ribs unless I wrap.

[JGo37]

So far, I still do mine flat - I'm building a UDS. If I am worried that they may dry - usually they're not real thick. I leave the membrane on and set them in membrane side up. That seems to hold in the juicy. My Weber 22 hits about 230F on the indirect side. If the ribs have good meat to them, they always come out great. In fact, I've never wrapped ribs. And I do wrap and cambro roasts 50/50 of the time.

[EdF]

Mine never seem to dry out, and I never wrap. Different cook times for different cookers though. It's easy to understand why they don't dry out in the kamado at 5 hours for back ribs (which is what it sound like you're talking about) or 6 hours for spares. A ceramic kamado holds moisture. KBQ has convection, so each of those times is an hour less. But in addition to convection you're using wood a bit higher in moisture content than kiln-dried, so moisture is getting pulled into the cookbox.

Understand your cooker is the first step.

Bonus pic, from the KBQ:

[Troutman]

Hey tell me about that paella pan....nice !!!!!

[barelfly]

Ha! Like Troutman, I noticed the paella pan more than th ribs. Not that the ribs don’t look good but I totally dig a good paella and that pan sseared ms to fit the model needed to make some! 😁

[EdF]

paellapan.com I'm pretty sure. Stainless. They're very easy to clean and come in several sizes. So good, we bought two.

[Corvus]

Ditto ecowper...... I run 250-300, never wrap and the ribs have always been perfectly tender and moist. It has become our favorite way to cook ribs.

[Troutman]

I usually buy those 3 rack packs at Costco and wrap one (daughter likes sweet ribs) and let the others go nekkid. Try spritzing, keeps moisture in and promotes bark formation.

[treesmacker]

I used to have the WSM 14" and ribs didn't fit flat, so I would roll them into a circle and skewer them to hold. They always came out excellent (too my taste). I just used the lid thermometer and kept temp about 250, with the water pan completely full at the start and adding a little water if needed. My son has that fine smoker now, as I've moved to pellet Rec Tec.

[ecowper]

treesmacker yep .... keep the cook chamber humid and run at 250 or so and you will have good ribs :-)