Smokin' Ribs
Spring has finally arrived and it was time to get some ribs smoked up for a get together. Below are some pictures of how we do pork baby back ribs. Smoking is an art, not a science, so we are always evolving and learning. The techniques below have produced the best ribs to our liking but you are encouraged to mess around with things and see what you can come up with. If you have any questions or suggestions please email us at info@livingwithheed.com. Unfortunately at the end of the smoke we were running late to our event so pictures of the final product aren't here. Another smoke is soon in our future though, and we'll update once done.
A couple of key points:
- We smoke at 260-270 degress
- We prep the ribs with mustard and rub and wrap them the night before. We pull from the fridge about an hour before smoking
- There is a membrane on the ribs that if you research it on the web you can read about. It is a pain in the butt to figure out how to remove this and took me a while. Once you know how though it makes a difference so PLEASE learn how to do this.
- We use apple chunks for ribs, almost exclusively
- When it comes time to wrap, we baste the ribs with BBQ sauce and double wrap with heavy duty aluminum foil to seal in the moisture
- We prefer fall off the bone ribs, so these ribs will not win you competitions (but likely will win you some new friends)
We mess around with sauces pretty frequently. I think a custom BBQ sauce is in our future with a little more heat to it, but Stubbs works fine in a pinch. We put a base of spicy mustard on the ribs, apply the rub, and later when we're ready to wrap we apply the BBQ sauce. It is obviously critical that all sauces are Red approved!
For ribs, it is my experience that apple chunks provide the best flavor. Opinions will vary here so mess around with it. In the past I've even blended woods. Ordinarily hickory is my go to chunk but not with ribs, it's apple every time.
These are the ribs prepped up and ready to go. We did the mustard and rub, wrapped them, and let them sit in the fridge overnight. As I prepped the smoker and got the coals going we took them out of the fridge and let them sit at room temperature. Then when the smoker is ready we throw them on for about 90 minutes before pulling them to wrap. We baste them with the BBQ sauce then and double wrap them in Heavy Duty aluminum foil. At that point you can probably throw them in the oven but for some reason putting them back into the Egg produces more moist meat (for us) so that's what we do. On for another 2 hours and pull them to rest for maybe 30 minutes. Dig in, no more sauce should be needed ...
The heating element has proven to me to be the best way to get the coals going. I NEVER use lighter fluid. Sometimes I'll use a propane cylinder to get them going but since we bought the heating element I don't recall a time not using it. It's easy and really efficient.
We go through the aluminum foil when we smoke and yes I fall for the Heavy Duty marketing gimmick.
This is what it's all about. The first 90 minutes is just flowing, beautiful, sweet smelling smoke. The entire time we keep the smoker right at 260-270 degrees. Some say that's too hot, but it has worked for us and worked really well.
They've been on for 90 minutes. I coat some foil with BBQ sauce as well as baste the ribs. The ribs are then double wrapped and put back in for about another two hours. The double wrap keeps the moisture in as does the extra BBQ sauce. Nine times out of ten this leads to "fall off the bone" ribs which is how we prefer them. People say you can't win competitions with fall off the bone ribs ... that's fine. We cook for us, and we like them moist, tender, and falling off the bone. So that's how we cook 'um.