Need help! First ribs, temp questions (baby back)

[LA Pork Butt]

patcrail Not seeing how they are cracking it is hard to answer that question. Another thing to look for is shrinking back from the bone end. I agree with jfmorris. Expect them to take 5 hours, and expect spare ribs to take 6 hours.

[BFlynn]

Id skip the wrapping for now.. You can make really good ribs without that step.

Keep it simple. You can always add more steps later.

[patcrail]

Thank you all! Bottom line was it worked "ok", just not sure if I over cooked the baby backs or under cooked them. They had 1” of meat, easy, on the thick end, 1/2 or more on the thin end, so maybe I shouted have treated them more like a loin or chops , I don’t know. They were probe tender & cracking on the bend test at about 145 IT (3 hours), but the temp was really making me second guess. I’m now wondering if I should have just pulled them then. After another 2 hours, then an hour wrap, followed by almost an hour for bark & sauce, they weren’t higher than 170, no longer probe tender, no crack on bend test. So either I cooked them way too long, or 7 hours wasn’t enough. I’ll do spares or St Louis next time, so I’m not trying to cook loin meat to a high temp

[RichardCullip]

Give St Louis style ribs a try next time. No dry loin meat on this cut. Spares, Baby Backs and STL ribs all cook a bit different. Keep experimenting and you’ll find your favorite cut if ribs. For me it’s STL style.

[BFlynn]

Here's the last racks of baby backs I did.


intermediate pic. 2 hrs into cook.



Here's the final rib





Cant really see the bone pull back

​​​​​This is the under side


Bark on finished ribs

[shify]

patcrail - all I can find around here are the extra meaty kind with a huge cap of loin. I don't particularly like those and find them hard to cook well. I've since given up on finding baby backs and have converted to a full time st. louis spare rib guy now. Cook up much better and don't take all that much longer.

[HawkerXP]

Did you tell us what you are cooking on?

[Mosca]

Trying to find a photo, I don’t usually take pictures of them at intermediary stages. But here are a couple racks that are done. See what I mean? They just look done.

These were the first ribs I made in the Weber kettle. The end ribs were a little crispy, I cut those off and ate them myself. Still good! But everyone who got the middle ones raved.

[patcrail]

Thanks. Yeah, I read Troutman’s primer too. These were definitely on the meaty side. Not sure, but I want to say 3 to 3.5 lbs... the loin meat was almost an inch thick on the "wide end" of the rack...

[Jfrosty27]

I have to side with Mosca here. If I tried to count the cooks I’ve screwed up I’d run out of fingers and toes. But hey, that’s half the fun of this bbq thing. All the trial, error, and with luck and practice, success! Smoke on!

[BFlynn]

When I do baby backs, I look for racks close to 2 1/2 lbs. I see some that are 3-3/12 even 4 lbs. All that extra weight is loin meat.

Loin meat gets dry.


Keep on with the ribs. They'll get better.

Also, Troutman has a good primer on ribs.

[Mosca]

Man, it stinks that your ribs didn’t come out right. Bummer. But you know what? It happens. We’ve all eaten (or tossed) a lot of mistakes.

Baby backs aren’t so different from spares that I’d tell you to change anything from Last Meal Ribs. They’re meatier, though, so the "bend test" isn’t as reliable an indicator, and that’s where I think you got mixed up. More reliable is those bones showing. But the best indicator of all is something that you won’t recognize on your first cook: They just look done.

Once you’ve done a few racks, you’ll know what I mean. And it’s not a narrow window; there’s a nice half hour or so where they just look done. Unfinished ribs are dry. They can be reddish, or mahogany, depending on how much smoke they took on; color isn’t an indicator. Done ribs are shiny, and "crackly". They’ll pass the bend test, absolutely, but they’ll also look like the cracked edges are sharp. You are rendering the collagen, and it comes out of the meat and you can just tell by looking at them.

Do this for the next time: Do 3-2-1. 3 hours bare, 2 hours wrapped with liquid (go on the ‘net and search, lots of variations, everything from apple juice, to honey and Parkay, to bbq sauce), last hour bare again. 3-2-1 didn’t become popular because the ribs come out bad, it became popular because the ribs come out reliably good. What it will do for you is keep you from wasting an afternoon, it will get you ribs you can serve proudly, and it will get you to the point where you can recognize finished ribs.

And just so’s you don’t think it’s just you: for the 4th I decided to make sous-vide-q ribs. I did everything by the letter, they looked great, they smelled great... Good thing I made burgers and dogs too. They were awful. Dry and overcooked. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’ll figure it out.

[patcrail]

I’ll never boil, lol.... and I’ll try it again, but I’m about done with baby backs, they seem like a big cross between a hot & fast cook (loins/chops), & a low & slow (Ribs)....
and BTW, I didn’t open the lid at all other than adding a wood chunk at 1 hour, then doing the bend test at hour 3

[patcrail]

May have been, good point. There was a good 3/4-1 inch of loin meat on the thick end

[patcrail]

Thanks, everyone, I’ve calmed down. I pulled them after about 7 hours , enough to let the sauce set. They were "ok", but nothing like what I was hoping for. However, that was my first attempt at pork ribs. If I did baby backs again, I guess I’d do two racks, and pull one off after 3 hours or so when it cracks on the bend test at 145-150... it is loin meat, after all. I’d let the other one go all the way up around 200, till it started to bend again, then I’d know. Just bizarre how it passes every test (probe tender, crack, ets) at 145 ,IT, which is the short end of the recipes here, (3 hrs), but if you try to take them closer to 200, even wrapping, it adds hours, and they don’t bend & crack any more... it was about a 7 hour cook for a 2.7 lb rack of baby backs, and would have taken another hour or two to get to 203, so I can only assume the recipes are crossed up... I may be wrong, but these were butter tender by probe at 145 after 3 hours, and the rest of the cook just seemed to be trying to chase that tenderness again