7-Bone Whole Rib, no-salt Red Bell Pepper Rub, Smoke Vault 24 & tons of Q-view

Pit 4 Brains said:

LOL! When I read the title of your post, I got as far as 7-bone and quit reading. I thought to myself, "I gotta see this! a seven bone?" So I started reading the post and of course none of it made any sense because I had a seven bone chuck steak image in my head..

Good looking smoke so far. That is a killer deal on a ribber!

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Aah, yes, if this isn't something you look for in the stores, you may find it confusing. The labeling on most packages is somewhat decieving as well...they call it a bone in rib eye, why, I have no clue, as rib eye is boneless to start with. Yea, the price is too low to pass up...if we have to dig a bit deep in the pockets to score a deal like this, then that's just what we'll do. It's not very often I can justify dropping a hundred bucks on a piece of meat, but when it's a cut of this caliber, I can make it happen now and then and feel good about doing it.

 

meateater said:

Now thats a chunk of beef. Looking forward to the finally.

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Those whole ribs are a pretty awesome sight, especially when they come out of the smoker all crusted up and...well, here, I'll just let the pics tell the rest of the story...

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I got a bit spooked doing this particular whole rib today, as I had guests coming from out of state passing through for an afternoon visit and dinner...well, believe it or not, at 4 hours into the smoke, I stabbed my trusty thermo probe and got a 30* reading...yea, my first thought was a bum probe insertion or my probe developed a nasty hiccup. Then, I remembered the thaw process and length of time I was slowly warming the nearly 22lbs of meat, fat and bone from -20*. So, I watched the probe every few minutes and noticed it rise to 32* over about 6 or 8 minutes. Now I'm thinking I have to do some chamber temp cranking, which I reluctantly did...225-235* soon changed to 300~325*...for the remainder of the smoke...well, until it hit 140*, then I jacked it down to 250*...I actually could have cut the heat and covered the intake of the burner housing and let it finish at this point, IMHO.

Just a peek before I tossed my smoked boneless.skinless chix thighs into a pan to steam for it's finish:





You can probably imagine that I was thinking things are looking a bit dicey on getting the whole rib finished for a 7:00 pm dinner...especially when I had planned for a 9-hour smoke and 1-hour rest under a foil pan...that's elapsed time along with I/T on the display...(  ):



But the Smoke Vault has no problem putting out heat on demand...(it can hit over 450* without breaking a sweat, especially on a warm day like today):



15* rise in I/T in 21 minutes...OK, now it finally woke up after that 6 month hibernation...we're on the road to success...



Nice amount of pull-back showing on the bones....yeah, we're gonna make this one in good shape...good bark formed and nice color...can't go wrong now:



Too cool...90* @ 6:00 hours into the smoke...just happened to stumble into the kitchen to check things out while visiting with my brother-in-law when I caught this one:





I did a 180* rack rotation about 6 hours in, to even out temp variances a bit, but this is formerly the back side of the beast...140* mark:



After, oh, I think 45 minutes or so resting...collected up some rather lean drippings to add to the Au Jus:



This made for some very fine eating...I will say I changed things by using foil pans on top and bottom for resting, and this continued the cooking from carry-over much father than I expected. I pulled it to rest at 150*...should have been 140*, but it was still very juicy, with a med/well coloring when I sliced about 10 lbs off of it for plating...hmm, got a nice little smoke ring in places too...btw, the smoke was relayively strong, but not overpowering, being such a large cut...if you took a bite of mostly the outer layer, you knew there was a good long smoke. Also, the no-salt version of the Red Bell Pepper rub worked really nice with milder rib meat...I mentioned this was no-salt to my sister and she just smiled, nodded, and continued savoring and chewing:







Another big hit for the whole beef rib...man, you just can't wrong with these. Even a smaller 2-3 bone would make a great meal for a smaller family...yea, I'm prodding here......if you can keep an eye on prices and jump on one when they're on sale, you won't be disappointed with the resulting feast.

All in all, another really good smoke. The thawing of that huge cut of meat tried to put me into a coronary when it came time to probe and check progress on temps, but then, every smoke with a large cut is a new adventure, so I just had to play the hand I was dealt. I'm guessing that the I/T was still in the lower teens when it hit the smoker, and that in itself can make for a really long day (or night).

Thanks to a no-nonsense gasser, I was able to kick things into overdrive and get things heading the right direction and on-time for dinner. I'm not one for yanking high temps, but today called for extreme measures, and the Smoke Vault came to the rescue. Had I been firing with charcoal for this smoke, I think we would have been just dining on pulled chicken, or maybe some chargrilled steaks (fine eating as well, but I wanted my beef rib), and the beef rib would have been finished...oh, about midnight or later...that just wasn't part of the plan.

If anything else comes to mind, I'll drop a note again...I think I've covered the major events leading up to this fitting end for another nice piece of beef...well, the end's just starting, 'cause I'll be burping smoke-rings for the next 12 hours...LOL!!!!

Thanks all!

Eric