Canada Day Smoker

[Lightning]

I'm stuck on the rotten midnight shift over a beautiful long weekend of course.  Anyways, I thought I'd get up early one of the days and treat myself to some ribs.

These are an experiment in a couple of ways.  One, I've always put rub on my ribs and there's a recipe that was printed on an old bag of Kingsford charcoal in a picture that someone (sorry, I've forgotten who or I'd link to the post if I could) posted a couple of years ago that's also in the Kingsford's Best Barbecues book that's available online at archive.org from a Washington, DC restaurant's chef that calls for sauce only. The recipe makes no mention of a rub at all so it sounds like the ribs are cooked plain at first probably to make the smoke flavour stand out on its own.  I'm trying that with the one rack of ribs that has no rub.

The other thing I'm trying for the first time is hardwood lump charcoal in the WSM. Previously, I've used Royal Oak briquettes, Maple Leaf briquettes and most recently Weber briquettes. So far, my favourites have been the Maple Leaf and Weber ones. The Royal Oak has a bit strong of a flavour for my liking and made ribs taste too much like hot dogs. I also tried Kingsford once and I did not like the results at all so I won't be doing that again.  This time, I've got Royal Oak lump burning in there.  It took a long preheat before it started running cleanly.  There was a thick, acrid smoke during startup that took a long time to clean up that would've been downright nasty on the food if the ribs were put in during that.  I've got a couple lumps of cherry wood on once the charcoal started burning cleanly and then put the ribs in.

It's going to be a kind of a long day by the time I finish work in the morning but so far, from what I can smell when the wind shifts and blows towards where I'm sitting relaxing in the shade at the other end of the back yard, it's going to be worth it.


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[Lightning]

Two and a half hours in on the ribs. The ones at the back with no rub are showing off a nice colour from just the smoke itself.  I'm going to give these several rounds of sauce starting in about half an hour.


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[Hollando]

Two and a half hours in on the ribs. The ones at the back with no rub are showing off a nice colour from just the smoke itself.  I'm going to give these several rounds of sauce starting in about half an hour.


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Happy Canada Day!

What was the final result?


-H

[JEBIV]

I used to do ribs without rubs, I may just go back and see if I like them better that way, it has been a long while

[Lightning]

The final result was great.  I won't use as much charcoal next time.  I had trouble keeping the temperature down. Burn time and temperature sag we're not a problem at all.  I was really pleased with the results.

The ribs with no rub at the top of the cutting board tore in half under their own weight when I lifted them off the grill.  I was more careful when I took the rubbed ribs off and I was able to manage it without them tearing.  The no rub ribs were good but totally beholden to the barbecue sauce for much of their flavour and I think I might have overdone it with the sauce.  On the other hand, the leftovers seemed to taste much better on the second and third day.  I'll have to experiment more with sauce only ribs.

The lump charcoal was a great success though and I will definitely be doing that again.  I was actually quite nervous about doing that based on all the accounts I've read in various places that WSMs were designed around burning briquettes and don't work well with lump at all. Maybe it was beginner's luck with my first lump attempt but this was not the case one bit about not working well with lump charcoal.


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