This thread title I find funny, but I'm laughing at myself. Before today I didn't know what "doing it 3-2-1" meant. I thought maybe it had something to do with how a snake of charcoal was setup, with the rows of stacked charcoal.
That's not what it means. At least not here.
This began as these things often do, with my eyes glazed over wandering around the grocery store in the morning. I spot pork ribs on sale, $2.50/lb and I've been sorta wanting to try them again after having so-so "luck" before. And they're "St. Louis style" which I later learned just means not baby backs and not the rib tips.
But I don't think that much about it really until I see that they are labeled COMPETITION STYLE. wait wut?
Competition thickness or whatever, I suppose. And that's also funny because I never really see any BBQ "competitions" around where I live even though I do own some Kingsford Competition charcoal. Maybe I'm a competitor after all, sez so right there.
Now the other night,
@chuck s mentioned doing a cookup tonight since our house is bugging out on travel for awhile. And when I sees the competition-cut ribs I sez to myself I sez, chuck s and me ... we're nothing if not Competition Caliber are we not? Two racks into the cart, bam. I text chuck s to let him know "I have tomorrow night's dinner in the shopping cart." Later that day we finalize the plans and chuck s throws me a couple frozen beef ribs to add to the mix.
So last night I do a light slather with mustard on all of 'em and rub some of the pork with my friends' pork rub and some with The Squeal. (Beef details below.)
The BBQ sauces were used sparingly later, at the "1" mark.
I'm getting ahead of myself. I mostly followed Jeff Phillips on this,
http://www.smoking-meat.com/april-23-2015-smoked-3-2-1-st-louis-style-spare-ribsRather than use a rib rack I cut the racks in half for my WSM, after trimming them and pulling the membranes best I could. Here's the basic initial setup with some KBB and some BBQ Wood Flavors hardwood charcoal (nice ...) and some BBQ Wood Flavors apple smoke wood,
Time goes on .......
Here's a mid-cook shot of the beef ribs and some of the pork ribs, just prior to foiling.
And here's the bottom grate, right towards the end,
I should also note that I glanced at what Aaron Franklin said about beef ribs here,
http://andrewzimmern.com/2015/04/21/aaron-franklins-beef-ribs/ but in the end didn't really do any of that. Mine got seasoned with a Weber beef rub of some kind and rode the WSM along with the pork at whatever temps they saw.
Speaking of which, my top grate was initially 300 but I very soon got it to 250, then 225 where it stayed most of the 6 hrs or so the meat was cooked. With a toothpick test the meats were all pulled at the same time. Well that's not quite true, we did stick a thermometer into the beef and saw just over 180 but it was still pulled at the same time as the pork.
The beef incidentally also got foiled and spritzed with apple juice, along with the pork for Stage 2. For the last, uncovered "hour" the two BBQ sauces were divided across the meats. And I know that 3+2+1 doesn't equal 6. I can't help you there. Or maybe we
did pull the meat at 3:30 and not 4:30 and I forgot. Chuck?
We fixed "Corn a la Chuck", whereby ears were tied back and much basting was done with butter, garlic, onion, salt etc.
The two char baskets might not be a "vortex" but they initially heated to 600 in the center, enough to pop a few kernels within a few seconds until we repositioned the corn better, and closed down the oven some ...
We "relaxed our meat" right out there in the neighborhood, while the corn chugged along doing what corn does best,