Rib vending question?
 

In the next few months I will have a lot of vending gigs and I had a question about preparing and freezing ribs for future use. Do you guys do it? What is the best way.

My thoughts were to cook them almost all the way and thaw out overnight before and heat on the grill to order.. Please help me not lose my shirt!!!!:eek:

When I do vending, I cook the ribs a 1 - 2 days before and then cool them as fast as possible. They are cooked about 90% of the way by this time. I then will put them back on the smoker at the vending site. After about 45 to an hour, I finish and sauce them on my charcoal grill I have on my mobile smoker.

If the vending event is over 5 hours, I will cook half to three-quarters of the ribs like I said above and the rest at the event. The customers think that they are getting just cooked ribs when they see the smoker open and there are a combo of cooked and just cooking ribs on it.

I have never froze my ribs after cooking just because it is my preference. Try a test run of freezing them, then thawing and finishing them.

thanks.

I also do it like chuckswagonbbq. They come out pretty good. I also sauce them to order. I have never tried freezing ribs after they are smoked.

I do mine all fresh that day and have them coming out in two hour increments.

When precooking them how are you wraping them. I too have a big gig coming up & was thinking about doing the same thing. I was considering putting them in vacume seal bags, refridgerating them. Is that too much cost & trouble, or should they just be wrapped with foil, (or plastic wrap)?

For the ribs I am going to cook them 85% done and foil them or vacuum seal them, depending on how many I can get in the bag. There is no way I can cook ribs for the event a couple of days in advance, I need to cook way to many. I am going to get a few racks tomorrow and experiment. I will show you guys picks and the outcome.

Just get some huge pots and boil them, finish on grill then heavily sauce.

That's what I usually do, but I was trying to actually smoke them this year.

ok heres what we do. cooked fully cryovac and then we freeze them .. the day you serve all you do is take them out put them in a warmer and bring them to about 140 as you go through a package you start another then you wont have to many out and you will still have them frosen for another day

I put my ribs in the full size aluminum catering trays and cover with plastic wrap and foil then put in the refrigerator. I can get about 6 to 8 St. Louis style ribs to a tray.

The morning of the event, I pack the tray in the coolers with ice around the trays. I remove then when I need to start to re-heat them.

While I am normally the cryo-suck king... if it's only a couple of days and they are NOT going to be frozen, I would wrap them in plastic wrap and into the fridge...

I do freeze cooked ribs for my customers and for them I cook to within a half hour of being done, cryo-suck, and then put them directly into the freezer...

JMHO

Thanks Divemaster !

Plastic wrapping two racks at a time works great
Need a helper working the plastic wrap roll (keeping it lined up)
We have held ribs for hours in a hot box
When needed they go to a flat grill
I like the caramelized sauce better :)
Gene Goycochea and Arlie Bragg taught me this one