September, 2019 - David Carr

Food: Smoked baby back (pork) ribs
Temperature: 275°
Cooking time: 5:30
Wood used: Apple
Notes: Cooked using minion method to start charcoal, then the popular 3-2-1 cooking method for ribs, spraying regularly with apple juice.

OK, it’s time to smoke some ribs. I’ve tried out the smoker on a couple of chickens and learned how to use it a little, so it’s time to make something I love… pork ribs!

I decided to try a popular way of cooking ribs called the 3-2-1 Method. Basically, you cook the ribs uncovered for three hours, then sauce and wrap them for two more hours, then cook them uncovered with another layer of sauce for one more hour. I deviated from this slightly in that the last hour was too long — the ribs were already at ready temperature — so I only cooked them about 35 minutes.

Food: Smoked Chicken
Temperature: 275°
Cooking time: 3:00
Wood used: Apple
Note: Used Minion Method to start charcoal, which worked great. Kept consistent temperatures throughout the entire cook and held right around 270-280 degrees.

This was actually my second time using my new smoker, having just wrecked a similar chicken a day earlier. I’m not entirely sure where things went wrong on the first go-around, but the breast read a little under minimum safe temperature and the leg was a little over. When I carved it, the breast was fine, but everything else was undercooked.

Since I wanted to try ribs this weekend, I decided to get another chicken and give it another shot. This one turned out pretty great.

I put a rub on the chicken and held the smoker at 275° for three hours, spraying it with cooking spray every 30 minutes or so to help the skin turn crispy. Overall, I think it went well and I’m getting used to tuning the temperatures with the vents on the Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. It’s still going to take some practice though to get better at it.