The plan was to smoke 3 racks of baby backs; 2 with a traditional BBQ flavor and one rack of Chinese style ribs.
I gave 2 racks some Mild Bubba Q Rub the day before:
For the Asian rack I used the rub from Jeff's book and applied it an hour before smoking:
The plan was to smoke a combo of hickory and apple chips for 3 hours at 225, then at the 4 and 4.5 hour marks, apple sauce to each rack. I also filled the water tray with hot water.
Here are the racks at the 4 hour mark:
When applying the sauce at the 4 hour mark, I screwed up and applied the Asian BBQ sauce to the traditional ribs. There was no turning back at that point, so I reapplied the Asian sauce to the majority of all 3 racks (explanation below) at the 4.5 hour mark and upped the temp to 275.
At 5 hours, the ribs on the top rack needed a little more time, so I left everything in for another 20 minutes. Here is the end result:
Here is a pic after I cut up the ribs to serve to guests:
No complaints from anyone and I thought they were great. In the future, I will use all hickory, as the smoke flavor was a little to mild for my liking with 50% apple chips.
This might be a stupid question, but is it common to have the food on the top rack cook slower because it is further from the heating element? If so, should I rotate the ribs during cooking? My preference is to open the door as little as possible. The rack closest to the heating element was pulled away from the bone a little more than the other racks, but no ribs seemed overcooked or too 'fall off the bone'.
Since the MES 30 is only so wide, I have to cut a few ribs off of each rack and cook them on their own tray. I was able to apply traditional BBQ (store bought) to these racks. Here is a pic with some grilled kielbasa:
Last pic of the Father's Day meat feast is of some grilled chicken thighs that I deboned and marinated for 4 hours in an oil and citrus marinade:
I gave 2 racks some Mild Bubba Q Rub the day before:
For the Asian rack I used the rub from Jeff's book and applied it an hour before smoking:
The plan was to smoke a combo of hickory and apple chips for 3 hours at 225, then at the 4 and 4.5 hour marks, apple sauce to each rack. I also filled the water tray with hot water.
Here are the racks at the 4 hour mark:
When applying the sauce at the 4 hour mark, I screwed up and applied the Asian BBQ sauce to the traditional ribs. There was no turning back at that point, so I reapplied the Asian sauce to the majority of all 3 racks (explanation below) at the 4.5 hour mark and upped the temp to 275.
At 5 hours, the ribs on the top rack needed a little more time, so I left everything in for another 20 minutes. Here is the end result:
Here is a pic after I cut up the ribs to serve to guests:
No complaints from anyone and I thought they were great. In the future, I will use all hickory, as the smoke flavor was a little to mild for my liking with 50% apple chips.
This might be a stupid question, but is it common to have the food on the top rack cook slower because it is further from the heating element? If so, should I rotate the ribs during cooking? My preference is to open the door as little as possible. The rack closest to the heating element was pulled away from the bone a little more than the other racks, but no ribs seemed overcooked or too 'fall off the bone'.
Since the MES 30 is only so wide, I have to cut a few ribs off of each rack and cook them on their own tray. I was able to apply traditional BBQ (store bought) to these racks. Here is a pic with some grilled kielbasa:
Last pic of the Father's Day meat feast is of some grilled chicken thighs that I deboned and marinated for 4 hours in an oil and citrus marinade:
