Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Question for the BBQ experts

Ribs are a funny thing.
I love them when they are fall off the bone, but apparently true bbq experts say that they shouldn't be fall off the bone and rightly cannot be unless they are boiled (BIG BBQ SIN).
They are supposed to be cooked tender but should have a bite consistency like a soft steak, so i've read.

Some past occasions i tried to get to this fall off the bone stage and did ribs at 250F for say 3 hours and all that happened was they dried out horribly. I typically have a tray of water in the bbq to add moisture but you have to keep filling up the thing.
So two weekends ago i used a Bobby Flay method from his Food Network show. The ribs were good, not overcooked, but i did take them off 30 min before Bobby's recommended time because the ends were looking horribly dried out (and progressing towards the middle meat). There was tenderness but still kind of rubbery.
I was expecting better results in the tender category.

Ribs seem to be my nemesis!
Brisket and pulled pork, easy IMO.

I find ribs pretty easy. I normally do baby backs with the 2-2--1 method and spares or St. Louis 3-2-1. Sometimes I spritz some times I don't. If anything I tend to over cook and get fall off the bone ribs. I've found that's what most people love with ribs.

I've not had issue with doing pork ribs on my rotisserie on the grill, but beef ribs are hard.

The last time I did beef ribs they were a bit tough. Still trying to figure them out.

It's funny. When i first started cooking ribs, this is sort of what i did although i don't think i cooked them for that long (maybe 3 hours max with 1 hour smoking, 1 hour covered, and the last hour smoking again).
They did come out fairly well.

Somewhere along the lines we moved away from covering. I think we had an issue where the sugar caramelized and then stuck to the foil and we ended up cutting off rib meat to even eat the damn things.
What i can't recall is whether i had the flame spreader in place or if the ribs were being cooked over the coals that day.

In any event, i'm going back to the 2-2-1 idea and i'm going to give the 'long' cook a try. Can't say i've had ribs on the BGE for more than 3 hours before so this will be a first.
Adding 2 hours to the cooking time...

I have to agree though from a comment on this site:
http://majorleaguegrilling.com/2012/01/09/competition-ribs-3-2-1-method/
If you are going to cook ribs, don't do small runs of single package ribs. It isn't worth the 5+ hours of cooking time.
You may as well cook multiple racks.

That's the one downside. Mine goes up to 550 and that's not really hot enough to sear. for steaks I'll still keep my little cheepy kettle.

Otherwise I think its every bit as good as a traditional smoker. Pellet grills have been doing award winning smokes at competitions.

I'm tempted to try ribs tomorrow. Rick. I'll have to read up on these methods you're posting.

The last two rib cooks were not great so i'm tempted to try it again today as well.
But instead we're doing seafood.

I have a couple racks of baby backs for tomorrow. Will be the first time for the new smoker and PID controller. Going to try 225 for 5 hours.

I'm curious to know how you find smoking with the pid.

My plans for today were waylaid. I've got a couple of pork tenderloins that have been in my fridge for a week now (vacuum packed) that are now marinating. We'll see how that goes.