I probably should have made this post a few days in advance due to past rib tragedies that have occurred in our Smokette.
I guess I foolishly thought things would be different this time after reading a whole lot more about ribs and the art of barbecue, but I have a really bad feeling about the ribs I just put in.
Whenever I've attempted ribs in the Smokette (it's the older version with a temperature dial) they've come out very soggy and mushy. They don't develop the outer bark like they do when I smoke them in our charcoal smoker.
Now to my questions:
1. Should we still soak the wood for 30 minutes before putting it in the box? Also, should we be putting a piece of charcoal in there?
2. Whenever we've made ribs in there, we've stood them up on rib racks. I've done some reading where people suggest laying them right on the grates, bone down. This time around, we couldn't fit a second grate with the racks, so we laid them down flat. I'm very interested to see the difference in the top/bottom ribs. What's the verdict on rib racks?
3. Could we be over-stuffing the smoker? It doesn't seem very packed, we fit about 3 racks of ribs, half in the rib racks and the other half we laid on the bottom grate. What about cutting the racks? Some we had to cut 2/3 down to fit, while the remaining 1/3 sections were left on the bottom. Should ribs only be cut down the middle?
4. Smoking temperatures. This is the big one! The smoker says it doesn't require and pre-heating, but I'm not one to believe anything instantly heats up to the desired temperature. I set the temperature to about 200-210 and put a thermometer in there to measure the heat. Well, an hour and 30 minutes into the cooking the temperature was only at 180 degrees farenheit! The ribs I put in this morning started at around 90 degrees and over an hour and a half, creeped up to 180. Almost everything I read about smoking ribs says that the ribs should go in when the temperature is constant, and should be cooked at a constant temperature the whole time.
I hope the guru's can help figure out my problems here. The ribs come out edible, but they're just not the same as when we smoke them through the charcoal smoker. The shoulders we smoke in the Smokette come out fantastic, almost just as good as in a charcoal smoker, why won't my ribs do the same?
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