Ribs Gone Wrong!

Okay, admittedly I'm new to smoking ribs. My first smoke was pretty dry and tough. My second smoke was nice and juicy. So today was my third smoke. We get two racks of ribs, one of them fairly large by Philippine standards.

I'm going for Meathead Goldwyn's Pig Candy, so I follow his guidelines pretty well. I make his Memphis Dust rub. I brine my ribs for 12 hours ahead of cooking. That is mistake Numero Uno. He didn't say brine, that is my idea from other cooking. Bad idea!

We heat the Weber/Smokenator. I've had problems with getting to heat. So we remove the small water pan completely. Up the charcoal (mostly local lump) and start it with more than normal. We get start getting good temps pretty quickly. It is in the 220F to 245F range.

I load on the ribs, see below. We cook until they hit the 150F that Meathead mentioned, just a bit shy of three hours. Then we foil, using the "boat" method, with apple juice. The ribs go 1/2 hour in the foil. We have a temperature fiasco, the grill shooting to 325F because we left the dome off while wrapping the ribs. I adjust the vents so the temp drops, but it comes down very slowly.

We pull them out of the foil, drain the juices in the pan for the glaze, and return the ribs to the grill at about 270F but with the vent closed so the temp drops slowly but steadily to 240F. There is a still apple juice and some fat in the pan, so it didn't all steam off with the temperature spike.

Finally, one hour at 240F dropping to 230F, uncovered to dry the bark. The last quarter hour I pull the dome, glaze the ribs with the maple syrup/apple juice mix. It looks really good.



But when it is time to serve, terrible stuff. Very salty and very tough. Not sure why. Well, the salt I understand. But the dry tough texture, I do not. Maybe the removal of the water pan? Bad ribs, though I don't know if that is even a possibility.

The dry, tough result...

You aren't too far off on that one. And I KNOW better. But vapor lock in the old noggin took its toll. The dryness has me buffaloed. Obviously too much heat, I suppose. Or too long. But they weren't way over temp when I checked them before wrapping.

I expected to see them start to pull back from the bone if they were getting done. Almost none of that when we wrapped except on the ribs closest to the Smokenator showing just a hint of drawing back.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I've still got one or two racks in the freezer.

Thanks for your insights guys. Meat quality here in the Philippines is variable and you are stuck with what they have. I might get better cuts, but only if I buy at the public market where meat sits out unrefrigerated. I buy the better "supermarket" where the meat is at least kept in a cool display counter.

The brining was in a 7 percent solution (by weight water to salt- 1 kilo water/70 grams salt), and the meat did come out rather "hammy". I used the Memphis Dust Rub that Meathead Goldwyn has on his website. Which should not have made it very salty, given that the recipe is 3 cups of various ingredients total and only 1/4 cup of that was salt. And then only 1 tablespoon per side was applied per his "Vermont Pig Candy" recipe. My next couple of efforts will not include brine for the ribs, which up to now has worked very well when cooking (not smoking) pork chops and chicken in the kitchen.

Thanks for the save idea dadsr4. That is a good idea.

So let's get to the core of my problem. Is there a way to tell where the ribs are in terms of cook time? I had thought the bone pulling back was an indication, but these did not show that until the tail end of the cook. Goldwyn's instructions for wrapping was to do it at 150F, which the largest section of the ribs measured. However to get into the "boat" since I didn't individually wrap, they had to be cut down to fit.

And, in fact, most ribs are cut in half and are smaller. I am uncertain how to do the bend test, though I've seen it on videos, but with full racks. Does it work on smaller or partial racks too? I am committed to figuring this out. Any guides for checking where the ribs are will be appreciated. I have an instant read thermometer that is accurate. I will try the bend test if that is possible with the shorter, smaller racks here, and I will shorten my times down to something similar to baby backs. Anything else I can do or look for?

I want to turn out some juicy ribs with good smoke. and these definitely had a pretty good smoke, though availability of wood is limited to small commercial packs of shredded wood generally intended for gas grills. Since the whole aluminum packet smokes very quickly, I break it down into two packages and add them sequentially. That gives me about 45 minutes of smoke, but it is a bit heavy, so I may break them down into 3 or 4 packages so that it doesn't all go so quickly. A minor problem actually.

The one thing that did work pretty well was the glaze. I had pure maple syrup grade A. It does not have the serious maple hit I was expecting, but it was good. If grade B syrup was available, I'd definitely go use that and save the better grade for Sunday breakfast.

I have one more rack, sold in two pieces, that I will try tomorrow. No brine this time! Just the Memphis Dust rub and I will try some barbecue sauce I have. Pure maple syrup is too pricy to keep using on experiments. When I get it sorted, I'll dig out the Maple Syrup Pig Candy recipe again!

Thanks to everyone!

CarolinaQue, that is my plan. I will foil after an hour and half. I will be more careful during foiling and try to keep my Weber from having such a wild temperature overrun as it did with my first try. Just need to put the lid back on while we wrap.

Dadsr4, I've already done the rub, so you think olive oil over the rub? Or would you mix the rub into oil next time?

I have a brother-in-law learning the meat cutting trade down in Manila, a six hour trip by bus, but I'm hoping he will be assigned closer after his apprentice period. I'd have a running shot at getting ribs cut with a bit more meat if he was involved.

Ribs from the big commercial supermarket here cost about $5.00 a kilo (2.2lbs) Below is a photo of the last rack of closely trimmed ribs which tend to a lot of bone and not much meat.

NorthwestBBQ, I definitely hear you about the brine part. I know that most of this is simply experience and I will have to sacrifice a few sets to learning and making mistakes. And the meat cutters simply are not trained in the cuts we are use to in the States. They get 60 days of Philippine training and that is how they do it. I can't blame them, but my brother-in-law will listen to my request a lot better than the cutter behind the counter at the local grocery store or meat stall. Plus I have to learn to deal with what is here. They were selling the cut you illustrated until recently. Someone new must be doing their cutting since I'm seeing the flatter spareribs in the meat display these days per my previous photo. I did not have to trim those ribs at all except to remove the grey skin on the back of the rib rack.

I'm curious to you comment about Meathead. Do you think his advice, for the most part, is off or just very commercially self-serving? I bought the smokenator based on what I saw on his website. It works okay, but if I'd been hanging out here, I would have started with a couple of firebricks and charcoal on each side with indirect area in the middle. Oh well, I have the Smokenator now so I'm determined to make it work.

Okay, last set of the very flat ribs. Much better but still not great. Partially due to the cut, partially overcooked again, even though I cut my smoke time in half. I did learn more about controlling my Weber/Smokenator combo.

All though the grey skin had been pulled earlier, it seemed like the ribs had two sets and one still remained. The meat was done, I could have had them on for less time, maybe just 1 hour. The one section that had some fat was still pretty juicy, so I think a better cut would have come off much nicer. With no brine, they were not too salty. In fact, they could have benefited from more salt in the rub. I used some Trader Joe's Bold and Saucy BBQ sauce since that is what we had on the shelf. Not so much in choices of BBQ sauce here, usually if you want something different, you need to make it yourself.

All in all, a much more pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Sipping cola on the balcony, adjusting the temps on the Weber and listening to the neighborhood children play in the street. Occasionally reading a bit more of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on my plain-jane Kindle. Once and awhile a small cloud would sprinkle us with a short shower and the women would run out to pull their clothes off the clothesline, only to bring them back when it quit.

One photo has been removed by Image Shack for violating their terms of service. Not sure what is going on with that since it was a photo of a single pork rib showing the smoke ring.



Where there was meat, it smoked nicely. The ribs pulled back and I think it was a bit overcooked, even though I changed from 3-2-1 to about half that or less. Still, much much better than yesterday's fiasco!
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