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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