Planned to smoke some ribs, chicken and ABT's on Saturday for a little pre 4th get together. Since we live in a high rise building, we have to take the smoker to the park across the street. This is fine except that it requires me to be in the park with it for the duration of the smoke, as things tend to walk away around here if left unattended even for a few minutes. This used to be such a nice neighborhood...
Anyway, planned to pick up a buddy Saturday morning and hang out in the park for the day while the ribs smoked. Long story short, he didn't answer his phone all morning, and I didn't really feel like sitting in the park by myself for 6 hours. So I put them in the oven at 225˚ at 12:30. Finally heard from the disappearing friend at around 2, and went to pick him up around 3. Put the ribs, chicken and ABT's on the smoker at 3:30. Used lump charcoal and hickory chunks.
Pulled everything at about 6:15 and the ribs looked pretty awesome. Obviously no smoke ring, and there wasn't as much smoky flavor as there would have been, but they were pretty close. As people were still arriving and the corn wasn't done yet, I wrapped everything in foil and just put it back on the ECB with the lid off to keep things warm. This proved to be the downfall of the ribs. A half hour they were kinda dried out and chewy, and completely falling off the bone. No pics as I was so po'd at myself I didn't even bother to take any. The guests ate them and were polite about it. Frankly, they weren't exactly awful. They were pretty good in fact, just not that rib nirvahna for which I was striving. The abt's and the chicken were pretty awesome though.
I'll keep trying, and hopefully soon the BBQ angels will sing.
Anyway, planned to pick up a buddy Saturday morning and hang out in the park for the day while the ribs smoked. Long story short, he didn't answer his phone all morning, and I didn't really feel like sitting in the park by myself for 6 hours. So I put them in the oven at 225˚ at 12:30. Finally heard from the disappearing friend at around 2, and went to pick him up around 3. Put the ribs, chicken and ABT's on the smoker at 3:30. Used lump charcoal and hickory chunks.
Pulled everything at about 6:15 and the ribs looked pretty awesome. Obviously no smoke ring, and there wasn't as much smoky flavor as there would have been, but they were pretty close. As people were still arriving and the corn wasn't done yet, I wrapped everything in foil and just put it back on the ECB with the lid off to keep things warm. This proved to be the downfall of the ribs. A half hour they were kinda dried out and chewy, and completely falling off the bone. No pics as I was so po'd at myself I didn't even bother to take any. The guests ate them and were polite about it. Frankly, they weren't exactly awful. They were pretty good in fact, just not that rib nirvahna for which I was striving. The abt's and the chicken were pretty awesome though.
I'll keep trying, and hopefully soon the BBQ angels will sing.
