I think I'ma do this today! I need to make some ribs, but I don't have 5-6 hours to do them. I think it's worth a try. Headed to the store now to see if they have some babybacks or if I need to do St. Louis. We'll see....
I'll report back, and try to take some pics.
These'll be great with a final schmear and sear - schmear of late sauce and then sear with the flamethrower! W00T!
I have 4 of those things and absolutely love them, when I cook chicken wing drummets I put them in one of those so I can flip them without having to flip them one at a time, huge time saver.
Well I did two racks yesterday. I didn't do much of a rub, I didn't have any made up and was in a bit of a hurry - and decided to try something different. I cut all the ribs up (2 racks of St. Louis), threw them in the sink and coated liberally with kosher salt, folding all of it around and mixing them up to make certain I got them all well coated.
I then did the same with some white sugar and then with a VERY liberal amount of brown sugar. When I was all done, they were practically sitting in a sugar gel!
So, I put them all out on the smoker... now, in my small Traegar peller smoker, I can fit (barely) 3 racks of babybacks, or more comfortably, 2 racks of St. Louis. With these 2 racks, all cut up, it was much harder. Some were right up against each other, almost overlapping, so that limited some of the benefit, I am sure, of the surface area increase.
I cooked them about 2½ hours bare. Then I slathered them with some BBQ sauce and turned the heat up from 225 to 275, another 20 minutes, I slathered again, turned and coated the other sides, turned up to 350 and waited another 20 minutes. I pulled them off, wrapped them tightly and hopped in the truck for the 5-minute drive to my parents' house. I thought I was going to die on the drive - the smell was absolutely incredible, and I was HONGRY, so I was really suffering by the time I got across town. <sigh>
Only to be utterly disappointed! Seriously! The smell was great, flavor was really good, too, but they were NOT tender, not at ALL. Not at ALL. They barely got touched. I have seriously probably 1½ racks left over to do something with. I wrapped 'em up and left 'em in the garage last night, as the temp was in the teens and we didn't have any room in the fridge.
I think today, I'm going to just keep 'em wrapped and throw them in the oven for 2-3 (or more) hours at 200 or 225 to let them tenderize. I am sure they will be fine, then.
Some thoughts -
I really believe babybacks will work better for this. They are more compact, not as wide (or long in per rib length) and should be easier to cut up and fit on the grill, in my opinion. In addition, they seem to not take as long as St. Louis. I don't know why this is, but it seems I've seen people say St. Louis have more meat on them - this isn't true in my experience, I don't think. St. Louis are longer and flatter, but overall, per rib, or per-rib-inch (in length of each rib - coined a new term?? lol) I don't think they do. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.
But having tried St. Louis a number of times now based on everyone here liking them more, I just don't think they're right for us. I think my family prefers the babybacks, and I think their more compact size lends itself better to this recipe, due to needing more grill space to spread out the cut ribs. I think they're more uniform in size and shape, also, which should make it easier to lay them all out well. In addition, I find the St. Louis ribs more annoying to eat, with layers of connective tissue in between layers of meat, plus the annoying little cartilage ends you have to nibble through and around to get to more of the meat on one end of the bone. Again, just a personal preference, I think.
Definitely open to discussion on the topic, and welcome opinions.
I haven't tried this technique with St. Louis ribs, primarily because I have stopped buying them for the reasons you mention above.
Were the ribs under-cooked? Seems like with the extra time and heat you gave them that shouldn't have been the case. I got tough ribs, even with baby backs when I over-cooked them, even by just 1/2 an hour. So the extra heat and time may have been the culprit.
As far as fitting lots on the grill, I have packed them in very close (like 1/4" to 1/2" apart) and not had a problem with doneness or smoke penetration, but it did make it harder to get the sauce onto some of them (see the pic above). In the eating though that didn't seem to matter.
I'd say all your points are valid. My friend always does BB ribs and they are consistent and great. I have primarily done spares. I'm going to go with BB when I try this technique.
Day late but not short by any means. Also tried a new sauce, a sweet heat, mmm good. My rub was sprinkled on from high of garlic pwdr, onion pwdr, ancho pwdr, paprika, pepper after dry brining overnight. Aimed to cook em yesterday but things got in the way. Forgot a shot of the finished product, sorry. To many irons in the fire.
Hi, my name is Darrell. I'm an OTR truck driver for over 25 years. During my off time I love doing backyard cooks. I have a 48" Lang Deluxe smoker, Rec-Tec pellet smoker,1 Weber Genesis 330, 1 Weber Performer (blue), 2 Weber kettles (1 black and 1 Copper), 1 26" Weber kettle, a WSM, 8 Maverick Redi Chek thermometers, a PartyQ, 2 SnS, Grill Grates, Cast Iron grates, 1 ThermoPop (orange) and 2 ThermoPens (pink and orange) and planning on adding more cooking accessories. Now I have an Anova sous vide, the Dragon blower and 2 Chef alarms from Thermoworks.
mgaretz they turned out very good. They weren’t "ribs done", only took them to 180, but they were good & my wife loved em. Things are a little hairy around here in caring for her, so I had to stall the cook to the next day. Which meant my different twist I mentioned wasn’t necessary.
I thought I was under the gun Mon with a 3 hr. brine & no rub. I then "sprinkled" right out of the containers paprika, garlic pwdr, onion pwdr, ancho pwdr, thyme & stevia. I then called off the cook until the next day, go figure. I got the cook going on my Weber. I thought everything was under control, temp was at 250. So I took the dog for a walk & an errand. Came home & my wife says your "thing" was beeping & beeping & I didn’t know what to do. I told her all she had to do was turn the dial on the kettle down to 250, it was at 315. Yeah I know life is tough living with me, I’m always cracking jokes & sidewinding cracks.
It was close to dinner time so I pulled them. She thought they were great, me, not so much, good I would say. I would like to try it again under a more controlled environment, since the timing is remarkable vs. 4-4 1/2 hrs. I put Pirate Scott ‘s Ghost pepper Bourbon Sauce on half of them, thinking it would be to hot for her. She loved it. Thought the glaze on the ribs was beautiful. It must be a gal thing. She could stand the heat, that I thought, was simply marvelous. Great sauce!
According to the poll , yes it is rigged, it was 1 & a 1/2 thumbs up. And no the other half of the thumb didn’t end up in the store bought slaw.
PS. The beans came out of a can too, cuz I don’t give a rip.
​​​​​​​Thanks very much for the recipe/experiment. I will try it again.
Glad your wife liked them. Haven't tried them at any temp besides 225, so not sure how 250 affects the timing, but since they are individual, timing is more important than with a rack and it's easy to over-cook them.
mgaretz I tried the Blasphemy Ribs for the first time today on the Backwoods Chubby G2. Cooked for about 2.5 hrs at 250 and then a final 30 minutes with sauce. They came out great. Tasted just as you described. More bite than a 2-2-1 but very good. Definitely an option for folks wanting ribs but not having 5-6 hours.
Great! I don't know if the extra 25 degrees would have made them have more bite or not. If you can't hit 225F then maybe try a tad less time next time.
Oh, and it's 2.5 hours *total* time at 225F - sauce goes on at the 2 hour mark. You did 3 hours at 250F so that would indeed make them tougher.
Hi, my name is Darrell. I'm an OTR truck driver for over 25 years. During my off time I love doing backyard cooks. I have a 48" Lang Deluxe smoker, Rec-Tec pellet smoker,1 Weber Genesis 330, 1 Weber Performer (blue), 2 Weber kettles (1 black and 1 Copper), 1 26" Weber kettle, a WSM, 8 Maverick Redi Chek thermometers, a PartyQ, 2 SnS, Grill Grates, Cast Iron grates, 1 ThermoPop (orange) and 2 ThermoPens (pink and orange) and planning on adding more cooking accessories. Now I have an Anova sous vide, the Dragon blower and 2 Chef alarms from Thermoworks.
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