I need to thank some friends for some help they've given me and it's not the kind of debt I cannot pay with money so I decided to make a batch of ribs and share with them. I chose back loin ribs this time which come 3 racks/package at Sam's Club. With an extra grate in my WSM, I can lay six racks flat so I got two packages. Except ... since it's an 18 1/2" WSM they're just a wee bit too long to fit comfortably. I cut three ribs off the end of each rack to deal with that. The last time I did this I realized that these micro-racks would be ideal for experimenting with rubs. I put that plan into action on this smoke. I picked out 6 alternate recipes including some as simple as no rub (just some peanut oil) up through salt and pepper, salt, pepper, Adobo, brown sugar and including Raichlen's Memphis rub and BRITU. (I did consider Jeff's rub but decided against it for reasons I don't recall at the moment.) I used my usual rub as well on four od the big racks. (The other two big racks got the Memphis and BRITU.)
For smoking wood I chose hickory, maple (box elder to be specific) and apple. I smoked using a pretty conventional technique on my WSM and with water in the bowl. I've been pretty happy with smoking straight through so I haven't messed with foiling or mopping. The cooker settled into a relatively low temperature - about 200° - and I just went with that for most of the smoke. When dinner time came and the ribs were not quite done, I bumped the temp to about 250° for about the last half hour.
You can see in the picture that they're just barely done according to the 'pull back on bone' criteria.
But back to the rubs... That's the point I'm going to. SWMBO and I taste tested all of the combinations and our results were inconclusive. I like the way they all tasted. (I should probably also mention that these were smoked and tasted w/out sauce. I have no objection to sauce and usually sauce my ribs when I eat them. but I wanted to evaluate rubs this time and not the sauce. I did not say anything about sauce to SWMBO and she did not ask for any.) What surprised me the most was how good the simplest rubs tasted, including nothing more than some olive oil or salt and pepper. I could taste differences between different rubs and had a slight preference for Raichlen's rub as it had a bit of tang, probably from the mustard. The rubs add some additional flavor and/or heat, but they did not make or break any of the results.
The conclusion is that I need not obsess about the rubs I use. The experiment was interesting and I will modify my rub recipe to see if I can improve my results even more, but I think that is going to be a somewhat subtle improvement at best. On the other hand, I will continue to be careful of my choice of smoking wood. I've done some tests with various smoking woods and while the differences are still at times subtle, there are differences.
I'm curious if anyone else has done this sort of test and if so, what did you learn?
-walt
For smoking wood I chose hickory, maple (box elder to be specific) and apple. I smoked using a pretty conventional technique on my WSM and with water in the bowl. I've been pretty happy with smoking straight through so I haven't messed with foiling or mopping. The cooker settled into a relatively low temperature - about 200° - and I just went with that for most of the smoke. When dinner time came and the ribs were not quite done, I bumped the temp to about 250° for about the last half hour.
You can see in the picture that they're just barely done according to the 'pull back on bone' criteria.
But back to the rubs... That's the point I'm going to. SWMBO and I taste tested all of the combinations and our results were inconclusive. I like the way they all tasted. (I should probably also mention that these were smoked and tasted w/out sauce. I have no objection to sauce and usually sauce my ribs when I eat them. but I wanted to evaluate rubs this time and not the sauce. I did not say anything about sauce to SWMBO and she did not ask for any.) What surprised me the most was how good the simplest rubs tasted, including nothing more than some olive oil or salt and pepper. I could taste differences between different rubs and had a slight preference for Raichlen's rub as it had a bit of tang, probably from the mustard. The rubs add some additional flavor and/or heat, but they did not make or break any of the results.
The conclusion is that I need not obsess about the rubs I use. The experiment was interesting and I will modify my rub recipe to see if I can improve my results even more, but I think that is going to be a somewhat subtle improvement at best. On the other hand, I will continue to be careful of my choice of smoking wood. I've done some tests with various smoking woods and while the differences are still at times subtle, there are differences.
I'm curious if anyone else has done this sort of test and if so, what did you learn?
-walt