Pullin' Chocks

Time for a little ribbing...

This is a post about our Baby Back Rib experiment.  We have never smoked ribs before, or for that matter anything BBQ related.  Shilo has a nice early model natural gas Weber grill that is set up to double as a smoker as well as a grill.  We thought we would have fun and try to smoke a couple slabs of Baby Back Ribs, one of our favorites.  We looked through procedures and recipes on the Internet and You Tube and made up our own procedure from parts of others we read about.  Below we will step through our process in delicious pictures, enjoy!

We started with making our own rub; we used salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and rosemary.  We wanted to hold back the brown sugar until the finishing phase.

Two slabs ready with rub.  We applied mustard first then the dry rub to the ribs.  Then let the ribs "marinate" like this for 30 minutes to overnight.  We left ours for about an hour in the fridge.

We put the ribs back in the refrigerator just like this.

Shilo and Steve (and Alex and Hunter, see them?) set to soaking a mess of Hickory wood chips in water.  We ended up soaking waaaay more than we needed.  We soaked the entire small bag.  Half the bag would have been more than enough. 

 

OK, it's time to light the smoker!  We are looking to hold 225º F for 4-1/2 hours.  Two hours with smoke, ribs unwrapped direct on the grates, 2 hours without smoke basted and wrapped in heavy duty aluminum foil, and finally 30 minutes back unwrapped direct on the grates with finishing rub or BBQ sauce to complete the procedure.

Here come the ribs ready to go on the smoker, may as well do this right and drink a beer!

Two rib slabs on the smoker meaty side up, and it looks like Steve is putting the "Be Delicious" spell on the ribs.

Shilo and Steve check the ribs about 1 hour in.  She is smoking now and Steve adds more Hickory chips for good measure in a home made foil tray.

Two hours completed and now we remove the racks one at a time to baste and wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil.

Shilo and Steve baste a rack.  For our baste, we used apple cider vinegar, water, vegetable oil, a tablespoon each of Worcestershire and soy sauces, and the rub mix we made. 

Steve wraps up rack #1 after basting.

First rack is back on the smoker, now the second rack comes off for basting and wrapping.

Both racks are back on the smoker meat side down.  We kept them there for an additional 2 hours and no smoke is needed during this part of the cooking.

The second two hours is up.  The racks are pretty well cooked and will be easy to tear apart so gentleness is needed now.  Look at the first rack in foil coming off how it is sagging.

Steve adds finishing rub to rack #1.  This rub is store bought and has plenty of brown sugar in it.  30 additional minutes back on the smoker unwrapped will finish the ribs.

Rack #1 goes back on the grill meat side up for the final 30 minutes of finishing.  Be careful Steve, don't rip the ribs!

Rack #2 gets a Stubbs BBQ sauce finishing treatment.

Steve poured a bit on then used that spoon to spread the sauce around.

Voila, ready for the finish phase.

We decided to add finishing rub and Stubbs to the back side of the ribs after they were back on the grill.  This took a bit more flipping of the ribs, but no ribs were harmed so it was OK.  Next time we will finish both sides before we put them back on the grill.

Steve adding Stubbs to the back of rack #2.

 Through the magic of Blog, the ribs are finished!  Rack #1 ready for inspection.

Rack #1 cut, rack #2 resting.

Steve cuts rack #2, these ribs smell great!

Shilo and Steve raise a glass to good BBQ eats.  Many thanks to Gari for documenting the procedure.