I have been trying to make my V-Shaped roasting/rib rack work for smoking pork ribs but it always fell short. I was going to give up and then I saw expandable Sous Vide racks and thought wow that would make a great rib smoking rack. I then looked and found something that was stainless steel, cheaper, and of the same design:
I bought a 2 pack in case I needed to do a ton of ribs... and if the racks didn't work out I would use the racks as pot and pan and lid racks like their title suggests lol
Last Saturday I smoked 3 racks of baby backs at 10 pounds. I cut the 3 racks in half and stuck them in this exapandable rib rack. Some finished faster than others so I had to remove them from the smoker separately. The image below shows when I removed the final 3 that finished at close to the same time.
After just 1 usage, the vertical expandable rib rack worked better than the V-Shaped rack and I imagine better than any fixed shape vertical rib rack out there.
The nice thing about this expandable rib rack is that it can expand/contract to adjust exactly to the size of the largest rack of ribs. This means that all other racks of ribs will fit in the slots and my guess is they should be comparable in size so there is never too much slop. Also I had no real problems having baby back ribs stacked up in slots next to one another. The ribs below have NO Bbq sauce on them and looked that way naturally being vertical smoked.
![DSC_9065[1].JPG](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg' width='1000' height='562' viewBox%3D'0 0 1000 562'%2F%3E "DSC_9065[1].JPG")
I need to do some more cooking of ribs with the vertical approach vs horizontal approach. I think I am seeing that vertical ribs come out darker/blackish colored, less juicy, and not as tasty as horizontal style BUT only more testing will confirm this or not. I can say that this expandable rack is a much better vertical rib rack option!
Though I'm not 100% sure I will continue to smoke ribs vertical I can undoubtedly say that I WILL be using this copper colored Baskets on almost any smoke I perform. The following is a set that I just purchased that has the large basket and tray, a much smaller basket and try, and some tongs. I paid less for this set than I did for the large Basket and tray alone lol. After buying and using the large basket I fell in love with it and found the set of baskets for less money so I purchased it to have 2 large baskets and 1 small basket should I need to do a ton of chicken wings on multiple smoker racks. I should have enough baskets to cover the job :)
One important thing to know about the large bask it is that it is PERFECT size to fit in the MES40 on the smoking racks.
I love these Baskets because they fit perfectly in the MES40, have handles, are no-stick coating, and make it super super easy to add and remove meat from the MES with ZERO hassle.
If you notice in the pics above I just set the expandable rib rack in the basket, put the ribs in, and was able to add and remove the ribs to my MES smoker with easy handling!
I will still put my non-stick grate mats in the basket (the mats are a little big but work) to keep stuff from sticking and make clean up even easier.
The following are all items I plan to put in the racks for easy adding and removal and for some of them not to fall between the bars of the smoker racks:
I hope some of you find this info helpful and that some of these accessories help you with tougher items to manage while smoking/grilling!
I bought a 2 pack in case I needed to do a ton of ribs... and if the racks didn't work out I would use the racks as pot and pan and lid racks like their title suggests lol
Last Saturday I smoked 3 racks of baby backs at 10 pounds. I cut the 3 racks in half and stuck them in this exapandable rib rack. Some finished faster than others so I had to remove them from the smoker separately. The image below shows when I removed the final 3 that finished at close to the same time.
After just 1 usage, the vertical expandable rib rack worked better than the V-Shaped rack and I imagine better than any fixed shape vertical rib rack out there.
The nice thing about this expandable rib rack is that it can expand/contract to adjust exactly to the size of the largest rack of ribs. This means that all other racks of ribs will fit in the slots and my guess is they should be comparable in size so there is never too much slop. Also I had no real problems having baby back ribs stacked up in slots next to one another. The ribs below have NO Bbq sauce on them and looked that way naturally being vertical smoked.
I need to do some more cooking of ribs with the vertical approach vs horizontal approach. I think I am seeing that vertical ribs come out darker/blackish colored, less juicy, and not as tasty as horizontal style BUT only more testing will confirm this or not. I can say that this expandable rack is a much better vertical rib rack option!
Though I'm not 100% sure I will continue to smoke ribs vertical I can undoubtedly say that I WILL be using this copper colored Baskets on almost any smoke I perform. The following is a set that I just purchased that has the large basket and tray, a much smaller basket and try, and some tongs. I paid less for this set than I did for the large Basket and tray alone lol. After buying and using the large basket I fell in love with it and found the set of baskets for less money so I purchased it to have 2 large baskets and 1 small basket should I need to do a ton of chicken wings on multiple smoker racks. I should have enough baskets to cover the job :)
One important thing to know about the large bask it is that it is PERFECT size to fit in the MES40 on the smoking racks.
I love these Baskets because they fit perfectly in the MES40, have handles, are no-stick coating, and make it super super easy to add and remove meat from the MES with ZERO hassle.
If you notice in the pics above I just set the expandable rib rack in the basket, put the ribs in, and was able to add and remove the ribs to my MES smoker with easy handling!
I will still put my non-stick grate mats in the basket (the mats are a little big but work) to keep stuff from sticking and make clean up even easier.
The following are all items I plan to put in the racks for easy adding and removal and for some of them not to fall between the bars of the smoker racks:
- Chicken Wings
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
- Meat Loaves
- Ribs with the Expandable Rib Rack
- Ground Meat Jerky (sliced as well)
- Individual Sausage Links
- Burgers
- Stuffed Jalapeno's cut long ways
- Peppers for Chili Powder
- etc, etc, etc!
I hope some of you find this info helpful and that some of these accessories help you with tougher items to manage while smoking/grilling!
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