Rib tips and new method on my stickburner.

[42BBQ]

Hey everybody,

Been a couple of posts recently about cooking rib tips and also a great thread by Bandit about fire control with stickburners. I had some leftover rib trimmings in the freezer so I thought I'd fire up my Meadowcreek offset and try a few things out. First off I took my charcoal pan insert and dropped it in where I would have it if I was using the MC as a grill. I then filled the charcoal pan up with water. The pan is about the same dimensions as the cooking grate and sits six inches below the grate. Then I fired up a bigger batch of oak splits than I normally start with but let it all burn down to coals before doing anything else. Once I had a good coal bed I cut back on the draft and let the pit come up to temp.

The rib tips I just seasoned with a little MC spicy bbq rub and MC brisket rub. I didn't sauce glaze or wrap. I started spritzing them with apple/raspberry juice a few hours in.

The water pan gave me so much more control over the pit temp. I had a hotter, cleaner burning fire than what I am used to but still had a nice temp range from 225 to 250. I found it incredible easy to keep the temps where I wanted them but still keep a nice hot fire burning. My temp swings were far less dramatic and my fire was stickburning perfection. The sweetest, blue smoke I've been able to acheive yet while stickburning. I was in heaven. The pic of the smoke stack shows my "smoke" while cooking at about 230*

Here are some shots from the cook, enjoy, thanks for looking.

http://s1207.photobucket.com/albums/bb470/kendrafus7/

 

[tortaboy]

Looks Most Excellent.

 

[BigBobBQ]

those look like they came out great, I know folks that would rather eat them than the ribs themselves.

 

[Flavor Gangster]

Water pans are great. Because most cookers use one fire source to create dry heat and heat the water. You use about 35% of your energy on keeping the water to temp. Once the water is over 212 and your cooker is stabilized it will run very consistent.
Your running about 70% relative humidity inside.

In the meat industry we call this Wet and Dry Bulb. Wet being the temperature of the water.

You may run into the situation rub becoming mushy and not setting up at 230. To over come that just open your air intakes all the way and run upto 300 for 30 -40 minutes. Then shut it down and go back to 230. However, every water cooker reacts different. Just my 2 cents!

We run a 10 Gal water pan on a 60x42 beast. It is identical to a Jacks Old South.
We run it two ways and have the ability to switch temps at a moments notice. Low at 250-270 and Hot at 350-400.