I am needing to smoke about six racks of ribs on a SFB ChargrillerPro...the only way to fit thatthat many would be to use a rib rack , which I have never used..I have always done the 3-1.5-1.0; method with bone side down on the grill....how might the rack change that? My ribs are usually to die for and this is a New Years event so I don't want to screw it up! I know the obvious answer is to buy a bigger grill, which I asked Santa for, but apparently he didnt get the message
Thoughts??
In some ways, it changes things quite a bit, but in other ways, doesn't change much at all :)
you are going to have more meat / thermal mass in your smoker and that will change the way you smoker acts in a number of ways. Also, the difference in how things are stacked will affect the flow of smoke, as well as the flow of heat to some degree.
Question then becomes, how picky and detailed are you when it comes to smoking? If you aren't fussy, then no worries. Times might change a bit, but you'd still do the exact same process of cooking/foiling/firming up.
If you are more fussy about your ribs, you might find yourself flipping the ribs over in the racks and/or rotating the racks themselves (I do both). For example, I'll pull shelf 1 part way out, then rotate each rib 180 degrees in the rack. After all the ribs on that shelf are rotated, I'll go to shelf2, rinse and repeat.
Once I've rotated all the ribs in the racks, I'll then start moving shelves around. I'll pull shelf 1 out entirely and set it on the table. I'll then pull shelf 4 out and move it up to Shelf1 position. Shelf 1 will then go from the table back to where Shelf 4 was. I'll then swap shelves 2 and 3 out the same way. Which shelf ends up going where depends on how the ribs are looking and where the hotspots are.
This adds time to the cook, to be sure, but it's still a lot less time that doing multiple cooks and it makes for a better finished product.
The one piece of advice I'd give in either case is to not overload the racks. You don't want any of the meat surfaces being in contact if you can help it as that hinders smoke penetration as well as cooking time.
