Turbocharged chuck ribs!

[DaveD]

Hey folks, today I'm smoking up a rack of Prime chuck ribs from Creekstone, the second piece in a two-piece order I got over the summer. I did the first rack in early September and they were fantastic. That was before I got my SnS kettle, and I did it on the Pit Boss pellet smoker, with the first hour on the low-T "smoke" setting before raising the set point to 250F/120C.

Today I am running on the kettle, and set it up in the usual way for low n slow. I'm using a new bag of charcoal, Royal Oak Chef Select, that I found on sale recently, instead of the B&B I had before. The grate temp has been hanging around 250F/120C where I want it, but for some reason today's ribs went from fridge temps to 160F/70C in under one hour!! Verified my Fireboard probes with the instant read, sure enough, they're correct.

Never seen anything like this. Granted that I've done beef ribs only on the Pit Boss before, using that "smoke" setting, which runs at about 130F/55C, for the first hour. But it's taken up to four hours to reach those temps every time previously, not 45 minutes!

It's only 9am, way too early to start drinkin', what do I dooooooooo??

Trimmed off the minor fat cap:




Dry brined overnight, Hank's Bona Fide Beef Rub 30 min before, and at 45 minutes into the cook at the warp-speed temps:

[RiverJeff]

It's 5 o'clock somewhere! those ribs are looking so good! I plan to do a butt outside on the pellet machine today liking at around 20 degrees here!

[Panhead John]

That is awfully quick Dave. Based on your bottom pic, you might have your ribs a little too close to the heat. I always put the meat as far away from the SnS as possible. I also rotate my cooking grate handles to the left and right sides, not the front and back like you have. This allows me to place the meat even further from the coals, almost directly against the kettle rim. Did you put water in the trough? That could help too. Not saying this is your problem, but it might have contributed some.

[Panhead John]

With the easy spin grate that comes with the SNS kettle, it’s a breeze to just spin the fold up part of the grate back over the coals if needed during the cook.

[Bob K]

My theory with the sns - the hottest part of the indirect side is the far edge of the grate opposite the coals. My guess is most of the heat rolls up and over the dome before escaping out the vent. If the food is right on top of the coals, then yes that’s the hottest obviously. But I think the center of the indirect side is the sweet spot. Took me many cooks to notice this.

[DaveD]

PJ, I understand about the easy spin grate, but with my grate probe clipped on, rotating it is a slightly more involved process, I have to unclamp and reclamp it. I always clamp on the underside, so that means I need to lift the grate - kind of PITA.

[rlozinak]

It 5 o'clock somewhere!

[DaveD]

Here we are, just two hours in and temps are reading 191 & 198F!!! Crazy. The instant read shows some regions still down around the mid 170sF/80ishC, but some areas are well and truly done, probing like butter.

Just fired up the Pit Boss and will set it to 200F/93C and let these puppies just sit, I guess... will put them in a foil boat and keep an eye on things, ready to cover fully in foil if it starts looking dried out.

Panhead John I did have the reservoir filled with water. It's almost all gone now, but that won't matter now that I'm moving the ribs into the other cooker.

Never seen beef ribs look this done in 2 hours!! BTW, the grate probe is clipped to the underside of the grate just out of this view in the foreground.

[Steve B]

Might sound silly. But what temp is your fridge? Do you know what the temp was in the meat when you first put the probe in?

Somthing is definitely amiss. Did you reposition the meat probe?
Unless you’re running like 500* pit temp there’s no way that meat will get up to that temp that quickly.

Also just noticed I see 2 probes in the meat and none on the grate.

[jfmorris]

Yeah I was looking for his grate probe too. I bet the grill is hotter than he thinks!

[Jfrosty27]

Something is really odd here. I do beef ribs often and have never had a rack take less than 5.5 hours. As much as 9 hours. Interested in the outcome.

[DaveD]

Couldn't agree more! Weird with a beard. I've done beef ribs 8 times before, might be the thing I have Q'd the most. Never seen anything like this before!

[DTro]

I wonder what you kettle temp is/ was. Two guesses : One, it kind of looks like a lot of charcoal burning/burnt for 250F. Two, Probes are too close to the bones and you are not getting an accurate reading. Either way if they finish up before serving time, a long hold won't hurt them.

[DaveD]

Progress report. I've foil boated the ribs and transferred them into the Pit Boss with its set point at 200F/93C, and it's sitting at 220F/104C nice and steady as measured by two probes, one on the grate holding the ribs and the other at the top of the smoker (they read the same to within a couple of degrees). Temps initially fell to about 172-183F/78-84C but have bottomed out and will slowly start climbing again at some point.

The story so far:



Here it is boated up:


The meat was below 40F when it went on, as you can see in the temp profile, and there is tons of pullback on the bones... temps confirmed with insta read... this meat has in fact gotten to that temp in that short a time. Never seen anything like it.

[realdocBBQ]

That is just wild. I did a rack just like that last weekend and was shocked they seemed done in 4 or 5 hours.

[Steve B]

Very odd for sure.

[Red Man]

You clip the grate probe to the underside of the grate? Have you done this before? I believe you were running probably more like 325-350 at the top of the meat. Next time you use the kettle try and clip probes below the grate, above the grate, and another 2” up if possible. The highest probe would represent the temp seen by the top of large pieces of meat. I suggest running this test when you are actually cooking something to get the most accurate results. I think you’ll be surprised how much the temp varies in just a couple inches of vertical height in the kettle.

[mnavarre]

Over a 5+ hour cook the above grate probe & the below grate probe were a pretty consistent 45-50 degrees off and the probe on the fire grate was a pretty steady 70 degrees lower than the top probe. Things tightened up after the water ran out about 4 hours in, and having water in the trough seemed to use more fuel to maintain temp, but I think my KBB may have been a bit damp since we had rain the other day. It was a new bag, and off the floor, but my garage leaks like a sieve.

[jfmorris]

I saw this too, and have to think this is DaveD 's fatal mistake. I find a huge temp differential below the grate when using the SNS. On the charcoal grate its 100 degrees lower than the cooking grate. I would expect that the grate probe clipped below the grate would be at least 50 lower than if it had been above the grate.

He was cooking way above the temp he thought he was cooking at in my mind. Instead of 250F, probably 300F or so.

[jfmorris]

DaveD even if it saves space on top of the grate, you can't put the meat above a probe clipped on the underside, as the cold meat will "shadow" the probe, and also block air convection to the probe. If the ribs were directly above the probe, there is no telling how hot you were running. Probably even higher than the 300 I expect you were at.

Save space by clipping the probe somewhere at the edge of the grate. Heck - dangle it through the top vent if you have too!

[Red Man]

I’m not seeing the grate probe in any of the pics. It’s not clipped under the meat is it?

[DaveD]

It's out of the shot, clipped to the underside of the grate a couple of inches away from the meat, definitely not directly under it. It's in the same spot I always have it.

[DaveD]

Steve B, the grate probe is out of the view but it's there - clipped to the underside of the cooking grate just a couple inches from the meat. In the temp profile above you can see it was reading a normal 250F/120C pretty much the whole time, with one short excursion as it recovered from a lid-lift.

DTro , you can see where the probes are in the latest pic, well clear of the bones. And the fact there has been so much shrinkage and pullback suggests that if they were reading artificially high, it can't be by very much.

The one major variable here is the charcoal - my first time using this Royal Oak Chef Select. It absolutely burns WAY faster than the B&B I ran out of. The coals have already burned to ash in the 90 minutes since I moved the ribs to the pellet rig, with the lid off. The B&B have lasted hours after I do that in prior cooks.

Could they burn that much hotter to cook these ribs so fast? The grate temp probe shows that was unlikely, it was right where it needed to be. And if the temp were hundreds of degrees hotter, I would notice, I'm sure. No question that the progress of their burn was noticeably faster in just the few pics I got during the 2 hours on the kettle.

Still mystified! There's already some nice juice collecting in the foil boat, and like DTro said, letting it run like this the rest of the day won't hurt them ribs none. This is a closer view where the temp probes can be seen pretty well.

[TxF]

Ribs are hard to get a good temp on. I have better luck with the competition probes and I use a few of them and kind of take the average of them to tell me when to check on things with the probe.

Having them done early just means they have time for a proper rest, and that’s the real secret.

[Greygoose]

They sure look good for whatever is going on !!!!

[DaveD]

Update: Ribs have been slowly re-approaching target temp, and are now probing very tender just about everywhere. That's what I'm talkin' about. Bark is looking very nice as well. Still some juice in the bottom of the boat.



On the temp profile, the drop is where I opened up for the photo, and also topped up the water pan, so the door was open longer than usual. Everything seems on track, I can pull these in an hour or so and let them rest in the Cambro to drift down to serving temp by dinnertime. Then we'll know whether the weird behavior today follows through to the final product...