How to slow down the cooking of ribs

[Chuck]

So I've got a problem with my cook today. I'm doing 4 racks of spare ribs in a stand up rib rack in a 22 inch kettle. My last few cooks for 1-2 racks of ribs have been around the 6 hour time frame. I expected the same results here. I'm now 3 hours into the cook and I've got some good pull back from the bone, good color for the most part.

The problem is the guests are due here for another 2-3 hours.

How do I slow this down? Can I just lower the temp from the current ~225 and keep them warm, kicking up the temp later? Stack them to give it a thicker profile and rotate them? Or take them off for an hour or so and let them cook again later?

Chuck

[1buckie]

you could just lower the temp.....I've done that before......
it's a little tricky, you have to make sure the readings you're getting are right....if the 225 you were getting was higher, then a 180f reading might still be moving the cooking along too fast....make sense how I'm describing it?

I've, for instance, hot held brisket, on kettle, with a single row of coals burning to keep the temp @ 165 approx. for a couple hours........just warm enough, not really heavily cooking......

semi-loose foil, in a dry ice chest, NOT packed with towels (to allow a rest, without tight pack steaming) is another way.....then maybe a very short heatup near feed bag time...........

[Thomas Andrews]

Cheers for the knowledge, Buckie. It makes perfect sense to me!

[1buckie]

Cheers for the knowledge, Buckie. It makes perfect sense to me!

 I just hope it goes OK for Chuck.......that's an odd situation I've been in a bunch of times......don't want to finish too, too fast & have things turn to mush overcooking while the party starts late (or later than you've cooked for)

It's hard to tell how to handle it exactly.......that's really a 'play the ball where it lies' kind of situation.............

[Chuck]

First, sorry for the delay of a response. Its been a busy weekend.

I did wind up slowing things down a bit using a combination of the lowering of the temp and stacking the racks of ribs. I rotated them every 25-30 minutes for the last 3 hours. I didn't get the color/bark I like at the end, but the taste was still good and got compliments all around for them.

I was using a fairly new Maverick ET-733 for monitoring the temps. I think you're right Buckie, in that the thermometer is reading a bit lower than the actual temp. I'm going to be doing a boiling water test with it in the next day or two when I have time.

[1buckie]

Glad it worked out well !!!

sometimes I find if the therm (Thermapen in my case)  hits the wrong spot by just a bit, I'll get a weird reading & start thinking either I'm OK or things are running amok, instead of an accurate assessment.......

see here ;

http://weberkettleclub.com/forums/grilling-bbqing/f'in-thermometers-f'in-hi-heat-f'in-searing/msg98039/#msg98039

I'll return to just the grate therms & looking at what I'm looking at to snap out of the fog......