cooked spare ribs - how to maintain temperature for hours

[bayaniroca]

hi all!!

  recently i smoked spare ribs for my family for a occasion. to prevent guest waiting for the ribs to cook, i decided to cook the ribs quite early for dinner. i started smoking at 10 am in the morning then finished around 4 pm in the afternoon. That time guest were comming in late so we ate dinner late around 8pm. My problem is when it was dinner time my ribs were room temp. I wrapped the ribs in a foil then place it in a oven. 

  is there another way to make the ribs hot for hours without overcooking it? do i need to reheat it in my smoker? 

 

[noboundaries]

About the only time I have a large time frame between pulling the meat off the smoker and serving is when we are traveling to a daughter's house.  I wrap them in double HD aluminum foil right off the smoker.  I have an "extreme" cooler that keeps things hot or cold for days.  I put a layer of old towels in it, then the wrapped meat, then more old towels.  5 hours is the maximum I've gone, and they were still hot.  They fell off the bone, but were moist and delicious.  

Folks who are not meat smokers think "fall off the bone" is a sign of a true pit master.  If they only knew.     

 

[bayaniroca]

5 hrs isnt bad. would you reheat it in a smoker if you can or not? after 5 hrs in "extreme" cooler? 

"Folks who are not meat smokers think "fall off the bone" is a sign of a true pit master.  If they only knew." - made my day hahahahha

 

[noboundaries]

They were still quite warm snuggled in the cooler, which was actually acting as a warming box.  We just left them wrapped in the HD aluminum foil and stuck them in a 250F oven for an hour. 

 

[bayaniroca]

by doing so you can prepare batch of ribs ahead of time then reheat it in the smoker for an hour? am i wrong?

 

[noboundaries]

 
by doing so you can prepare batch of ribs ahead of time then reheat it in the smoker for an hour? am i wrong?

No, you're not wrong.  You can use your smoker like an oven.  I haven't done that, but I'd leave them tightly wrapped so they don't dry out.