8 racks of ribs at once...and then 3 more...

[go_home_red]

I'm breaking some rib smoking rules today (tying ribs together--gasp!). Tomorrow is my church's rib cookoff, but it's also a rib feed. So they're insisting that everyone cook 12 racks of ribs.

I don't want to do that at a rib contest. Anything more than 3 racks at a cookoff counts as work in my book.

So today I cooked 8 racks for tomorrow's feed. As for the rules that I broke...well, in order to cook 8 racks at once, I had to tie the racks together in pairs. Of course I was out of butcher's twine, so I had to use unwaxed floss. Which is really hard to tie when you have anything on your hands. But it worked out.

First, the pile of ribs...



Floss ready to go...



I tied the racks together in pairs with the bone sides facing each other. I saw it on America's Test Kitchen once (and they were using a Weber kettle!), so I thought I would try it. Also...I kind of had to, if I was going to cook 8 racks at once.



Charcoal fuse ready to go!



Lit and ready for the kettle plate! I dumped the lit charcoal on at 10:15 this morning, and it's still going now--I love Stubbs briquettes for that reason. I never had Royal Oak or Kingsford go that long.



Kettle plate on, ready for all of the ribs...



And the ribs went on at 10:40 this morning. I did my best to space them with skewers--there's a gap between the rack pairs, I just couldn't get a better photo.



I owe each of my kettle's leg socket welds a thank-you after holding all of that weight. After three hours on the grill, each rack pair went into foil (still tied together at that point).





I don't have any photos of the racks back on the grill, but here's a shot of one of the racks cut after saucing. They turned out pretty good as far as flavor, but the tenderness was just about as perfect as I've ever had it. :-)



After I pulled those racks off, the charcoal fuse was only about half gone, so I threw three more racks on. 11 racks of ribs on one charcoal load in a 22" kettle--this was a really great day for ribs! Wooooooo hooooooo!

[haeffb]

The ribs look great. But that kettle plate is SEXY!

[Geezer]

I like that kettle plate...and the ribs look awesome.

[G19]

One aggressive cook and looks like it turned out great.

[go_home_red]

Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully today's ribs will go just as well! I will try to post some pics of the cookoff later. :-)

[go_home_red]

Today's three racks of ribs were just as good as yesterday's, thankfully. I got 4th out of 16 cookers. I think I probably had the easiest grill to transport! 



I'm the green kettle in the middle of that photo. My tent blew over, breaking one of the legs off.  That's my neighbor's Traeger next to my kettle. Seems like every was using a pellet grill of some type, mostly Traeger and Green Mountain grills. Not me, though--I like to have a grill that has good smelling smoke.