How to keep them warm during transport for a party?

[wht93gted]

Here's the scoop.  This weekend I'm smoking up about 4-5 racks for a little BBQ over a friends house.  They live about 30 minutes from my house and probably won't be eaten right away anyway.

Using the 3-2-1 method I normally only sauce the last hour of cooking; 30 minutes on each side with my sauce.  If I do that can I pull them off the smoker, wrap tightly in foil, and place in a cooler wrapped in towels to keep them hot enough long enough and then just throw them on the grill for a quick heat up?  Should I leave wrapped or unwrap?

How do you guys accomplish this?  Figure, for this party, I'll pull the ribs from the smoker around 2pm and they'll be eaten around 3:30pm.  Lemme have your tried and true methods.  I'm not looking for ideas; I'm looking for things that've worked before.  Thanks everyone!!

 

[indyadmin1974]

If it were me, I'd do the 3-2 on the smoker and pull them off then and leave them wrapped in foil...I would probably even pull them off sooner because they will continue to cook in the foil.

Then if I had a grill available, I'd put them on the grill unfoiled on indirect heat until they firm up.

There will be others that may have better ideas about this though.

 

[jirodriguez]

Wrap them in 2 layers of heavy foil, put towel in bottome of cooler, put ribs ontop of towel. fill rest of cooler space with more towels. They will still be almost to hot to handle. I would either skip the foiling in the 3-2-1 or cut it down to only an hour or less, because they will get steamed a bit during transport in the cooler. If you cook them entirely without foil, put a little bit of sauce on them then foil and cooler them they will come out great after sitting in the cooler for a couple of hours.

 

[tank]

A few weeks ago I had a similar situation.  I cooked them via 3-2-1 and after the last 1 hour I wrapped them tight in foil stuffed them in the cooler with some towels.  It was about 1.5-2 hours before we arrived at our destination but they were perfect temp when it was time to eat.

 

[adiochiro3]

If you want some insurance, wrap 2 - 3 bricks in foil and heat them up to 150* in your oven or on your firebox.  Set a towel in the bottom of  your "cooler" to protect the liner, set the bricks on the towel, and then layer another towel over the bricks and set the ribs in.  Fill the rest of the empty space with towels -- if desired -- and everything will be super toasty for many hours.  Just remember that the ribs will continue to cook as others have already mentioned, so plan your cook times accordingly. 

 

[wht93gted]

awesome guys thanks a lot for the suggestions.  I'll let you know on saturday how everything turned out!