Baby Back Ribs HOT and FAST vs LOW and SLOW 3-2-1 battle on the Kamado Joe…. which method is best?

oh there's a lot of opinions on this one hot and fast versus low and slow what is the best way to cook your ribs today we're going to find out by putting them head to head hey i'm james from smoking dad barbecue and welcome to a video answering one of the questions i get asked all the time which is hey james what's the best low and slow or hot and fast when it comes to cooking the perfect baby back rib and the same principle would apply if you're cooking st louis cut ribs as well now one of the challenges is the internet is a wonderful place but also a confusing place and that's because it's home to such a variety of cookers and there's general barbecue advice which could apply to almost any cooker that you're using but then there's also specific differences and this is one of the cases where the advice that you might hear from aaron franklin for example using a couple thousand gallon drum offset smoker doesn't necessarily apply to your ceramic kamado style grow whether it be a kamado joe big green egg etc and that's because there's different heat sources that all of these grills use so some common elements would be conduction that's a hot surface with meat sitting on that we're not really doing that today our grids you know don't get too hot the second one is shared with all cookers and that's convection and that's how air moves through the grills now offset smoker is moving the highest volume of air and they get a great benefit and some bark from the amount of air hot air moving over your food at a very quick rate pellets try and simulate this with some forced induction and so a fan is moving the air and then kamado joe has the slow roller which increases convection air flow 20 times more than sort of the previous generation which didn't have the slow roller so there's some form of convection air going on where things really get different in the commodore space is what ceramic does to our cooking and so ceramic gets heat soaked and it adds this infrared radiant heat and that's like i wish it was today much much warmer where if i was standing out in the sun and you could get a sunburn that same extra energy source exists inside our kamado and this is where all that advice about low and slow or hot and fast can break down if you're applying a principle from another category of cooker that doesn't have the same categories of heat sources and so over the last couple years i've been getting the best results with a hot and fast rib cook but i've never done them side by side so that's what we're doing today we're gonna do the three two one method on the kamado joe classic and that'll take a total of six hours we're gonna do a hot and fast on the kamado joe big joe behind me for a total of three hours we'll get both ribs to finish at the exact same time around 6 30 tonight and we'll do a good old-fashioned taste test and answer this question on a kamado-style grill how should you cook your ribs let's get started and build our fire okay i've already got the inside of our kamado joe classic three cleaned out and i made a little space so there's no charcoal on the bottom and that's where i'm gonna go ahead and place our smoking wood i'm gonna use oak in both our classic joe as well as our big joe and since we're only doing one rack of ribs one piece of charcoal should be fine now that that's on the bottom i'm just going to push some of the remaining coals around it so it's packed tightly so as they begin to get hot and ignite that'll cause that wood to smolder and we'll go ahead and add some more charcoal now just before i do that i get asked this question all the time in general you want to stick to about a 95 charcoal five percent wood in order to get nice clean smoke if you start to go too much let's go extreme 50 50 you're going to have wood burning more than charcoal and wood can be unpredictable depending on the airflow it could either smolder out and give you bad smoke or it can combust into flames and you get sort of skyrocketing temperatures and make it really hard to control your cook so a nice ratio to sort of aim for visually think about 90 10 to 95 500 even better if you can for a wood to charcoal ratio let's go ahead and add some big block okay so that should be more than enough charcoal for our six hour low and slow cook and as you can tell you can still see air holes all the way around in our basket and we've been able to make a little mound just covering our piece of smoking wood so let's go ahead and open our bottom draft door vent which it is and fire it up start getting some heat okay so now that we've got a fire started in the center of our commodore classic three let's go ahead and drop the base of the slow roller in and that's it we're going to let this build heat in this configuration before adding the top of the sole roller and any of our cooking grids so just go ahead open up the top dome and let that come up to temperature and we're going to wait even though we're cooking between 225 to 250 degrees fahrenheit today we're going to wait till we see that on the dome before starting to make any adjustments and closing this down all right so let's prep our ribs so for these baby backs we're just going to get them out of the package remove the membrane so you want to have everything handy to do that so i've got a butter knife and some paper towel just to help sort of lift and peel that membrane and then for seasoning we're going to keep it pretty simple we're going to use some diamond kosher crystal salt as our base and then just a house rub and so this is the same household i use all the time but it's mostly garlic pepper a little bit of onion and paprika with some cayenne to give it a little kick so let's go ahead fast forward and get these out of the package okay so now we've got our ribs cleaned up let's go ahead we're just going to hit them with a little bit of mustard for a binder and then add our salt and our homemade rub okay our grill is now reading 250 degrees and we have heat in the dome which tells me we're actually getting up to temperature earlier when i checked this was still cold to the touch so let's go ahead and close our top vent and put it down to about the first line on the control tower top the bottom vent i'll put to one finger and let's go ahead now and install the top of our sole roller as well as our divide and conquer rack okay so first we'll install the base of the slow roller then the plate next we'll install the divide and conquer rack next i'm going to install the x accessory ring and i'm going to put that on the middle position because what that will do is allow me to put in a drip tray which will sit just like so and that'll give us just a little bit of clearance from the top of the slow roller to help prevent any of those fat drippings from burning as soon as they hit our slow roller let's go ahead and install our grates and now we'll close everything up with our vents where we think we'll need them and wait to the grill to stabilize around 225 degrees all right our grill's up to temperature so let's go ahead and drop on our first rock so it's just after 12 30 on saturday here local time so the plan is three hours just like this and smoke two hours in foil and then one hour back on the grill with some barbecue sauce to help tack up so that should get us right around dinner around 6 30 tonight the big joe setup we're going to do hot and fast that'll cook in half the time three hours so what we'll do is we'll get started those will go on at 3 30 local time let's put these to bed okay so now that we've got our baby backs going on the two one low and slow method on the kamado joe classic let's go ahead and build our fire on the big joe and so i want to start this fire ahead of time and have it stable and holding temp at between 250 and 270 degrees fahrenheit for 3 30 in the afternoon here local time so we can go ahead and drop on our hot and fast ribs and have both ribs finish at the exact same time around 6 30 tonight so let me bring the camera a little closer and we're going to repeat the exact same setup in our big joe by adding a piece of oak a little bit of extra charcoal to cover light our fire with the base of the slow roller and then wait till we see our target temp before we start installing the rest of our components and slowing things down i'll bring the camera close so you can see the setup in fast forward [Music] okay so now that we've got our little campfire going let's go ahead and drop in the base of our slow roller and just like on our classic we'll just leave it like this till we see our target temperature anywhere between 250 and 270 degrees bottom door is all the way open and our top vent is open and we'll make some adjustments once we see 270. okay so our big joe is reading temperature and we are starting to get some nice heat in the dome it still needs a little bit to go for this to actually be 270 should feel a touch warmer but we are getting close so why don't we go ahead and repeat the process we'll close our top vent i'll adjust that in a second as well as install the base of our slow roller and divide and conquer rack which just like on the classic we'll drop the larger i think this is 12 inch or 14 it's the largest one they make which is just almost the size of the top of the slow roller so we got pretty good coverage on this size and then we'll install our cooking grids close everything up and adjust down to about a quarter of an inch past the first line on our top vent and wait for everything to stabilize okay it's 3 30 that means we have been at three hours at about 225 degrees on our kamado joe classic our big joe has come up to temperature so we've got some work to do we're gonna throw on our second rack of ribs that'll have a three-hour cook so we're going to do those at two hours at 270 degrees unwrapped the last hour just a little bit less than an hour we'll put them in foil upside down add a little bit of mayo on the bones and some apple cider vinegar into that pouch and for our low and slow three two one ribs we're going to do something very similar we're going to put them in foil but they're going to be bone side down flesh side up the opposite of our hot and fast setup and we're also going to take the opportunity to add a little apple cider vinegar to that pouch i'm not going to throw too many other tweaks at either one because i don't want the difference in the seasoning or the liquid that we use for braising in the pouch to add any difference in flavor we're really just trying to get to the core of hot and fast versus low and slow and try and tell if there's any taste difference between the two methods themselves so let me bring the camera a little closer we'll prepare our ribs on the classic and then throw our ribs on the big joe okay so let's go ahead and grab our ribs so i'm going to place them in the exact same direction front to back as we did on the classic just like so middle of the grill looks good let's close it up and let those start smoking all right let's take our first peek at our classic ribs those are looking good starting to get that rub sticking to the meat which is what we want so now let's go ahead get our foil out and i'll transfer these onto the foil take you fast forward for that and we'll start to make our pouch to put some apple cider vinegar okay so we've got our pouch just gonna take a little apple cider vinegar and pour that underneath be about the equivalent of a tablespoon or two that's good just enough to help braise and steam so i folded over the back end and then double folded that and i'll do the same here on the front double fold tight but not too tight that we poke the bones through the foil and again wrap over and press tight [Applause] get those back on and they'll stay like that for another two hours just make sure my thermometer probe doesn't poke a hole in the foil double check we're good no hole so we are ready to go see you in two hours all right it's 5 30 and if smells could talk they'd say that smells good i wish i could share the aromas that are coming out of our two kamados going on today but we need to get to work instead of enjoying that moment so we're going to do now is we are going to put into foil upside down bone side up our hot and fast rack slather a little bit of mayo on that add some apple cider vinegar and put it back in the joe and we're going to go just a touch under an hour so that we can add some sauce at the end and get it to tack up and then our low and slow ribs they've just finishing up their two hour rest in the foil so they're going to come out and go back on the grill and get some sauce and spend the next hour there sort of drying out from being a boiled rib back into a smoked barbecue rib and that sauce should get extra tacky so let me bring the barbecue a little bit closer we're going to do the big joe hot and fast ribs first and we'll move over and do our low and slow ones second all right so let's check him out i don't know if that's coming through on camera let me move the camera actually a little bit closer one sec there we go i hope that's coming through there is a noticeable difference in the color and the bark at 270 degrees from the ones that we're doing at 225. now we'll confirm everything with our taste test but right now these are looking really good let me put the camera back on the mount and we'll get these in for now that we're done looking let's go ahead get out our foil grab our ribs and we are going to place these again upside down okay so the game plan here is just to take a little bit of real me not mayonnaise or miracle whip but real mayonnaise we're just going to put a strip of this down the bones you can use butter if you like all we're really doing is adding some fat that will melt and continue to hydrate our ribs but butter works just as well it's just a little extra work then a little squirts let's do that preferably a full bottle next time and just like before what we'll do is we'll start our wrap just to be a little bit of a boat and then we will put in a little bit of again the same apple cider vinegar right on the bottom again about another tablespoon that looks good and we'll wrap this back up put it on the same orientation that it is meat side down bone side up on our big joe for our hot and fast ribs see that in an hour all right our classic has been steady eddie all afternoon here but let's go ahead now open these up oh i'm greeted with some nice aroma there but again that bark is not looking as good well that's all right we'll go ahead and see if we can't firm it up now in the next hour all right so let's flip these over and go ahead and hit them with some barbecue sauce and then we'll do the presentation side last okay those look good to me let's close it back up and give those an hour all right our hour is nearly up so we're getting really close to that 6 30 mark so it is time to pull our hot and fast ribs out of the foil give them some sauce just so they have a few minutes to tack up we'll take another look at our low and slow ones see if we need any more sauce and they'll both be ready to finish at the exact same time let me move the camera a little closer and we'll get saucing up our hot and fast ribs so we're getting some bone pull back here so what i'm gonna do with any of that leftover mayo that didn't melt and go into our meat i'm just gonna brush that off but you can see all that liquid there just running on the bones that's some of that melted mayo which has just been helping moisten the bottom of our ribs here which has me excited let's go ahead and drop on some sauce okay let's sauce our presentation side which is looking really good all right so we'll get the last 10 minutes just like that to help tack up our sauce let's go take a look on our low and slow ribs oh these are looking good that has tacked up really nice you know i was actually a little bit worried about these ones earlier based on the look but now i'm not so sure that's got some really nice mahogany color getting some great bone pull back just so the sauce doesn't throw us i'm just hitting it with a touch more just so that the finish on your mouth is pretty comparable between the two and then we'll really be tasting for the rib smoke anything else that we can pick up to help separate these two but i'm pretty excited about this test all right it's time to get these off these are our hot and fast ribs going on the board let's grab the others and let's grab our low and slow so i'm going to get these in and cut them up but just before they cool off let's go ahead and take a look and see if we can see any difference between our two styles and let's do so these are hot and fast these are low and slow so looking at our low and slow definitely got a mild smoke ring i can see all the way around they look pretty good and our hot and fast ribs i don't know if that's coming through on camera those actually look to have a bit more of a pronounced smoke ring yeah definitely so let's go see if there's a difference in the taste but so far really close on the outside the sauce on this one a little redder with that extra hour but the smoke ring definitely looks better on hot and fast let's go ahead i'll cut some up rejoin you in a minute for a taste test all right i've kept these in order of the grill that they came off so to my left is the classic which is our low and slow my right is the big joe let's go ahead and start with our low and slow rib it was a really good rib still bite through didn't fall off getting very close to fall off on the bone in terms of the flavor i'm not getting a lot of smoke i i don't know if that's related to the smoke ring or the lack thereof at the lower and slower temperature i do have a thought on that i'll share once we taste the other one and see but let's go ahead let's get another bite make sure that's not an anomaly this is so fun i get to taste ribs for you guys this is awesome all right let's go for our hot and fast rib half the time will be half as good as good i don't know we'll find out i don't know if you can see bit of the smoke ring on this one again let's go for a bite there's a lot of difference so first difference this one definitely has a touch more bite to it so i get a more well-defined bite without it just feeling like it'll slide right off the bone it's not tough just i think actually a preferred bite for me in terms of my level of doneness let's get another bite i'm getting a different flavor too one sec okay so that different flavor it's the smoke i can taste the smoke on our hot and fast rib whereas our other rib while tender it tastes a little bit more like a boiled rib and that makes sense because it spent two out of the six hours in foil with some braising liquid and it's not really feeling as much as if it was cooked on the barbecue as our hot and fast rib this is one of those areas where depending on the cooker that you're using the flavor can really change a kamado style grill holds so much heat in the ceramic that actually doesn't do well with very low air situations i spent most of my first 10 years trying to chase holding that 200 degrees fahrenheit for briskets not only is it very difficult to do i actually don't find the food taste as good a small fire burning hotter usually means you end up in the 250 plus range before you start to get the full effect of a clean burning fire as well as the slow roller i've done a brisket low and slow on the big joe around 225 and one the same temperature that we use today hotter and faster 270 degrees and the smoke ring and the taste was much much better at 270 degrees and so whether it's been ribs or brisket i've just been finding this is the perfect temperature but speaking of brisket and pulled pork i've never done them side by side so make sure you're subscribed to catch a future video because i'm going to be cooking a brisket along with some pork butts doing the exact same test to find out if our meat depending on the type of meat is any different whether it's cooked low and slow or hot and fast so make sure you're subscribed with the notification bell on to catch that video when it's released anyways i hope you enjoyed today's video if you did please let youtube know by smashing that like button and let me know by hitting subscribe to catch future videos until next time i'm james from smoking dad barbecue signing off and remember don't be afraid to fire it up you

Channel: Smoking Dad BBQ

Views: 107,258

Rating: 4.9137931 out of 5

Keywords: kamado joe, smoking dad bbq, big green egg, 321 ribs, baby back ribs, pork ribs, bbq ribs, kamado joe ribs, how to smoke ribs, baby back ribs recipe, 3-2-1 ribs kamado, 3-2-1 ribs big green egg, 3-2-1 ribs, hot and fast vs low and slow ribs, hot and fast ribs, hot & fast ribs, low and slow ribs on charcoal grill, low and slow ribs charcoal, kamado joe baby back ribs, kamado joe low and slow, kamado joe low and slow setup, kamado joe hot and fast, how should i smoke ribs

Id: a7i0kF7AJKw

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021