Pellet Fan
All Things Considered => General Discussion--Food Related => Topic started by: BC Buck on August 27, 2018, 07:11:54 AM
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Iv read about the 3,2,1 method of cooking ribs but had never tried till Sunday. Normal rib cook for me to reach 205 takes about 4 hours at 220 deg. I see all the pros on TV wrapping with all sorts of goodies inside the foil so thought id give it a try. At 3 hour I wrapped with brown sugar, honey, butter and cooked for 2 more hours. The plan was then to put on smoker for one more hour to set glaze but ribs where so loose I was not able to even pick them up. :o
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275° for 3-3.5 hours without opening the lid until the 3 hour mark but make sure you can trust your grill grate temps as some units may run hotter than the controller says
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I cook both wrapped and naked. It really is just a personal preference. If you are going to wrap I would adjust the time. When I wrap I tend to go 2-2-1 @ 230. As I'm sure you know everyone's pit is different so take the times with a grain of salt.
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275° for 3-3.5 hours without opening the lid until the 3 hour mark but make sure you can trust your grill grate temps as some units may run hotter than the controller says
How do you prefer the texture of your rib? Do you get a clean tender bite (clean from the bone I mean)? I'd like to try your method and save a little time.
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275° for 3-3.5 hours without opening the lid until the 3 hour mark but make sure you can trust your grill grate temps as some units may run hotter than the controller says
How do you prefer the texture of your rib? Do you get a clean tender bite (clean from the bone I mean)? I'd like to try your method and save a little time.
It is a clean bite and very moist as someone else noted I think the fat renders better at the slightly higher temp. The thing I like the most is the easy of the process and the shorter length of time than other methods. I don't want to be messing around for 6+ hours to make a few racks of ribs. They will get to fall of the bone state if I leave them on too long with the ribs then breaking in the middle on the bend test.
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Q. Do you wrap your pork ribs?
A. Yes.
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Most of the time I wrap mine because my wife likes them very tender.
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I cook at 150-170 for a couple hours (more smoke) then 250 until they're done. We eat when they're done. [ Invalid Attachment ]
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Not anymore. I used to a few years back. I would add peach preserves and wrap towards the end.
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My answer is not anymore also. I quit wrapping them mainly for the mess it makes. When you are traveling in a RV there are not a lot of choices of what to do with the excess juice that is accumulated when you are done with the wrapping in foil stage. A while back (at home) my wife wanted them wrapped. After she spilled the juices over everything she agreed she did not want to wrap them anymore.
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I believe if you were to checkout the BBQ joints, you would find no wrapping. It's not to say all of these places produce good 'Q. Several do. Especially the ones that have fresh off of the pit food.
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I believe if you were to checkout the BBQ joints, you would find no wrapping. It's not to say all of these places produce good 'Q. Several do. Especially the ones that have fresh off of the pit food.
My brother wraps his in a pan with honey and brown sugar and he can't make enough of them some days out of his trailer. He sells 20-30 racks a day and rarely carries any into the next day. Probably not what many of us BBQ diehards would enjoy but it is what people want who don't make their own.
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Watching Pit masters on TV I see most of the competitors wrapping there ribs. That was the only reason I though about giving it a try.
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I'm so glad to see this convo! I have ribs on @ 250 right now and I'm semi-panicked as this is my first try not wrapping but I did not like the feel or timing with the 3-2-1 method, or the 2-2-1, or any of the combos I have tried.
I WILL get this right eventually!!!!
Can't wait to see how everyone weighs in and the reasons they have for their choices.
SurfAndTurf
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Never heard a compelling reason to. That would be a 'no' for me.
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Just to be certain and clear, we are talking spareribs, correct?
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Just to be certain and clear, we are talking spareribs, correct?
both
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I used to wrap and the results were good. Now I smoke at 150° for 2.5-3.5 hours and then sous vide @ 140° for 24 hours. Sometimes I glaze but they are great just out of the bag. :lick:
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Just to be certain and clear, we are talking spareribs, correct?
both
I wrap spares (2-2-1, 260° the whole way) but do not wrap the Baby Backs (225° until done, usually 6-7 hours).
Z
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Nope. I like a solid bite on my ribs.
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The wrap conversation is always interesting and I especially like when people point out what the experts do. From what I've seen, BBQ joints rarely wrap and at competition they almost always wrap. So you have to keep in mind goals. The home cook is probably somewhere in between. The comp cook will go to ANY extreme to produce one perfect rack. The restaurant is going for volume and streamlining the process, keep costs down etc. Lots of restaurants don't remove the membrane, something I would never consider skipping at home so I don't know that restaurants are the benchmark.
For me, I typically don't wrap for two reasons. One is ease and the second is I don't like a mushy rib. I do like them really tender so I find myself walking a bit of a tightrope. 3-2-1 seems crazy to me like you're just going to end up with mush. Maybe a 2-2-1 would work for me but I'd prefer to get the results I'm looking for without wrapping at all.
Final comment, temps are not always disclosed when people say they do or don't wrap. I tend to cook lower at 225. If you're cooking at 250 or 275 then whether you wrap or not may not even be relevant to me.
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For the first time ever I did not wrap my pork ribs. I instead got brave and decided to try Bar-B lew's recommendation he suggested to someone on a post a while back. 275° for 3 3.5 hours unwrapped. The two slabs turned out very tasty and tender with a nice easy bite. There really wasn't a huge difference in texture or taste over honey and butter with wrap except the unwrapped method had better smoke flavor and was much easier and quicker.
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Glad you enjoyed them and had some extra time to do something else.
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I did for 15 years, not any more.
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I like spares. I do them two ways.
1: 275* for 3.5 hrs +- which are just a little firmer and barky. No paint, just sauce them at the table.
2: Or 260* naked for two hours, then wrapped 260* one hour, then painted, naked at 260* for 30 tor 40 min. BUT I don't finish until they meet the bend test either way. Personally, my best ribs are the 260*cook with the wrap in the middle.
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I could never get any consistency when I foiled. To mushy. 275 for 3 1/2 to 4 hrs I get GR8 ribs every time!
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I used to foil baby backs but I kept cutting back the foil time. Eventually I settled in at about 45 minutes so I decided why bother? Now I am naked - well, my ribs are - the whole time.
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I have dropped the foil use on ribs and the drip tray recently, and am happy about using much less foil. Looking forward to the labor rib cook.
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I have tried both. There are a couple threads touching on this. 3-2-1 was too much cooking for B.B. 2-2-1 or even 2-1-1 probably could be better but I went back to unwrapped. Tried Bent/BBQ Lew method and really thought it came out best.
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275° for 3-3.5 hours without opening the lid until the 3 hour mark but make sure you can trust your grill grate temps as some units may run hotter than the controller says
I didn't intend on trying this method until I started running out of time. We hosted a gathering on Sunday and I figured it wouldn't matter if the ribs (6 racks) were cooking while my friends were drinking. After all, I had a keg and 6 lbs of pepper stout beef to keep them occupied.
But I changed my mind and decided I wanted to get the cooking over with. So after running the smoker at 225 for only 45 minutes, I cranked it to 275 and let it ride naked for 3-ish hours (brushed sauce on topside only for last 30 minutes). And I'll tell you what...I'm never going back. At least not for casual cooks at the house.
The ribs were perfectly tender and juicy. But the kicker was that it was the first time I've yielded a tender juicy rib with a crispy crust. Probably from the higher heat and no sauce on the underside (I never flipped them). The smokiness was perfect for me as well.
It's 275 for 3-4 hours for ribs from now on for me.
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Ralphie, I made 3 racks like that this past Friday. I had loaded up the rub really heavy on one rack with Cabella's Hot and Spicy rub. I ended up with a nice crust on them that my cousins really liked. Glad you enjoyed the new technique. As I have probably mentioned before, I love the simplicity of the cook and the flavor and tenderness of the results.
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I cooked another rack Labor day to confirm my first results with naked ribs cooked at 275°. This rack really turned out well. I did smoke them at 250° for the first hour before turning the grill up. I used a 100% apple and cherry wood mix, and dusted them with Rec Tec's Carolina Clay rub. I sauced them with Stubs BBQ mixed with honey on the last half-hour. They really were tasty and tender.
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Did a rack of St. Louis ribs today with the 260* naked 2 hrs; 260* foiled 1 hr; and 40 minutes painted and naked at 260*. Not the best picture, but the ribs were awsome. Dark color is due to the Blueberry based sauce I finished them off with.
(https://i.imgur.com/77fHF0Ul.jpg) :pig:
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Nice os. How was the blueberry based sauce? Any recipe for the sauce? Very interesting.
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Nice os. How was the blueberry based sauce? Any recipe for the sauce? Very interesting.
Long story behind the sauce. One of three fruit based sauces my son's group developed some years ago. They once submitted them to a big competition in Cal. but could not attend. They were called back an notified that they had won first, second, and third in the sauce comp. They decided to produce the sauces commercially and introduced them in Tulsa some years ago at various grocers (including Whole Foods, locally). Bottom line: they have retired from the business, and the sauces are no longer available. Let me say that they are my favorite sauces, but I'm sure there are some that would prefer the more standard blends. I will try to get the recipes from 3 Guys Smokin. And if permitted will pass on the recipes to our group.
1: Blues Berry. Has real blueberries and a bit of bite.
2: Razz . Has raspberry preserves of some sort
3: Spicy Razz. Same but with nice bite.
:cool: