Backyard Barbecue Basics: Pork Spare Ribs on the Kettle

good afternoon welcome back to another episode of mancave meals and backyard barbecue basics today is Saturday March the 31st and we are gonna cook that rack of ribs that we trimmed up last night we're gonna cook it here on the Weber Kettle I'm going to show you how I've got things set up inside the kettle here I've got my two charcoal baskets I failed each one of them up with charcoal one on each side and I've got a Weber foil pan in the middle here that pans going to serve two purposes today it's going to be a drip pan for the ribs but I'm also going to put water in it to help keep the moisture content up inside the cooker and at the same time that will also help keep the temperature down so what we're going to do next is I'm gonna light up about eight briquettes over here in my in my charcoal chimney and I'm gonna put four lit briquettes on each side and what this does is I'm going to put each of those on four lit ones on top and what that will do is that will provide a good amount of heat on its own but it will also allow me to create a long slow burn inside this cooker and hopefully with any luck the charcoal that you see there will be just about enough to do these ribs and we're going to be cooking up to about six hours on that so if we need more charcoal we'll add it during the cook but let me get this guy loaded up with water I'm going to fill that about half full of water and get our charcoal lit up and we'll be back and start from there okay you can see here inside my charcoal chimney I've just got eight bricks piled up to one side it's kind of hard to get just a few lit I've got my lighter cube right here so we're gonna like that guy up and then we're gonna move the chimney right over the top of it and I kind of unstack those a little bit we'll let those get burning and get ashed over and then we'll put them in the grill okay our charcoal is almost ready so I'm gonna use my tongs here to bring those out and set them right on the top here we're going to put four on each side they're not good that over we're going to let them sit for a little while longer four on that side [Applause] this doesn't seem like much charcoal and it's not but you just kind of have to trust me on this that this is gonna work for the temperatures that we want to cook at since we're going to cook low and slow so for now we're just going to set the grill on here and we're going to leave the lid open for just a little while longer to let those charcoal let that charcoal will continue to burn I am also going to use my digital oven thermometer here so we can monitor the temperature if you don't have one of these I highly recommend getting one they're a great way to keep up with the temperature inside especially when you're going to cook at temperatures that are low like we're going to cook today and we're going to shoot like I said for about two hundred and fifty degrees so I'm gonna open my bottom my bottom vent is fully open and we're gonna just leave it right there for now and I'm gonna put the lid back on the grill until it comes up to the temperature we're looking for and as we get closer to the temperature we're looking for I'll back the airflow down and I'll show you that as well okay our temperature is about up to 185 so what we're gonna do now is flip the handle up without burning ourselves and we're gonna drop a chunk of hickory wood one on each side and let those start smoking why when i grill continues to come up to temperature and i back the air vents down to about 50% to keep it from going too hot too fast so we'll let it continue to warm up and about the time we hit the 250 mark we're going to drop our ribs on ok our grill is up to about 225 so we're going to go ahead and put these ribs on move this thermometer probe out of the way get that big old rocket st. louis-cut we prepared last night they are gonna go on bone side down just like that so what I'm gonna do now I'm just gonna put my thermometer probe right in there like that we're not really measuring the meat temperature but this is a dual probe and this top part measures oven temperature so we're gonna leave it in there just like that so we can keep up with the temperature inside the oven [Music] and then we put the lid back on now our objective here it's probably going to be five to six hours and I'll show you as we go how to tell when the ribs are done also one note my known vent on this lid I've moved it to the back where it's perpendicular along the same line as the ribs rather than having it to one side or the other since I have charcoal on each side I want my exhaust vent to be in the middle of those so we're gonna let that guy cook we'll be back I'm also going to start my timer so we'll know how long we've been cooking so we'll start the timer now okay we are about eleven minutes in and inside my cooker the temperatures just under two hundred and fifty degrees it's coming right along right where we want it got nice nice smoke and what we have to do here is this lever on my weber kettle is the air vent adjustment that I showed you before and what we does we've closed it down almost all the way just want to leave it cracked and we're gonna watch this probably have a look at it every 30 minutes or so to make sure our temperatures staying where we want it we'll make adjustments there if we need to which we probably won't we can close up some of the air flow be very careful with this because it's hot and we'll just monitor I'll have a look at it every 30 minutes or so and like I said my target here is 250 but there's not really there's no magic number for for cooking ribs these temperatures you can cook anywhere you want between 225 or so and even up as high as 350 I just prefer mine a little slower so we're going to try to stay you know under 300 degrees and we'll keep our eye on this I want to come back in about 30 minutes or so and have another look also one important thing leave the lid on the grill each time you take the lid off of this cooker you are going to let a lot of air in there and it's going to stoke the fire and make it get hotter than you want it so it's it's really important to try to leave that lid on and don't take it off one of the common sayings and barbecues if you're looking you ain't cooking okay we're 21 minutes in I have not made any more adjustments to the air vents to 55 so I'll come back probably thirty minutes from now and we'll look at it again not going to touch anything not going to open the lid I probably won't open the lid to about two hours into the cooker so so you can have a look at it at that point okay we're at about the 1 hour mark it's gotten a little bit breezy out here this afternoon and my temperature here has crawled up to about 287 so what I've done are I have closed up the top vent to about half and left the bottom vent just barely cracked and like I said 287 still fine what I'm targeting today targeting was 250 but anywhere between 225 and 300 is going to be good that temperature will probably come back down a little bit and it's like I said nothing to worry about so we just just hit the one hour mark so we'll come back and look again at about two hours and if the two hour mark will actually have a peek inside see what's going on with the ribs okay we are just over two hours into our cook I read you're still cooking nicely here our smoke would still right in there and we have a burner hold on the charcoal it's burning and everything is looking good I am going to add just a little bit more water to the water pan underneath this won't pour it right in there food crack these ribs are still they still have a good way to go and I'll probably spritz them a little bit next time I open these up so we're gonna put the lid back on [Applause] okay we're about three hours ten minutes in we're still at 280 degrees in the oven and we're gonna have another quick peek so I can show you what's going on what we're looking for here is these ribs start to get ready because we're looking for those to pull back off the bone you can start to see that happening here the meat will start to contract and it will pull back it'll pull back a good way these haven't started to pull back fully yet but they're they're starting to get there so that's what we're looking for and we've still got a good ways to go so we'll just put the cover back on and let it continue to cook okay we're back we're at about the 4-hour mark now our grill is cooled down about 253 we'll keep our eye on it we may end up having to add a couple of bricks and charcoal so we'll have a quick look inside again there's that beautiful rack of ribs still can see that the meat still not pulled back off the bones yet it still got a good way to go and for what it's worth for those of you who do know a little bit about meat temperature my probe then I stuck in there just the whole whole my thermometer that's showing a meat temperature of a hundred and seventy seven degrees and if that's any indicator based on something like a Boston but we've still got 20 20 degrees or so to go there roughly and once we get closer to finish in time I'll show you how to test the ribs to see if they're actually ready or not okay we're about four and a half hours into the cook the grill is starting to cool down a little bit so that means that we need to add just a little bit of charcoal the the grill temps at 238 inside so we're going to pull the lid and just set it we're gonna flip both of our greets up don't burn yourself gonna stir there's just a tad try not to stir up too much ash and we're gonna put four or five more charcoal bricks on each side let's go a man right on top of what's there and then we'll flip the grete's back yeah close the lid back up we'll keep right on cooking those are starting to look pretty good on there you can see how the bones the meats still starting to pull back from the bone though our lid right back on here let her keep on rolling so that is an example of how you see that if we were doing a really long cook like a Boston bud or a brisket that might take upwards of 12 hours this is what you'll need to do throughout the cook as the temperature starts to fall off you'll need to add charcoal just like we just did and just keep the lid back on it and we'll be back another hour so to have a look that by the end we should be getting close to the finishing point okay we're about five hours 15 minutes into the cook our real temps back up to 275 so what we need to start doing at this point is checking to see if our ribs are ready and I'm going to show you how to do what's called the bend test and in essence all you have to do is get a set of tongs and you want to pick the ribs up and they should bend over almost double you can see how the skin peel back and cracked a little bit this should bend a little bit more than that so they're not quite ready yeah we're going to leave these guys on here they're getting close to being ready they're very close they're not far away at all so what we're also going to do shortly is we're gonna sauce those up then I'm going to put a little sauce on them and I'll let that cook on there a bit as well probably I'll come back in about 15 minutes or so put a layer of sauce on those and let them go for another half an hour so and they should be good to go okay we're about five and a half hours in these guys are about ready so we're gonna pop the lid off and let's have a little closer look here you can see here how the meats pulled back off the bones sometimes they pull back a little more sometimes a little less but now we're gonna put some sauce on there let them go for another half hour so so I have a little bit of barbecue sauce here we're just going to kind of spoon it on just on the top side you can use any kind of sauce you like this is homemade it's a brown sugar and molasses sauce it's kind of sweet but it's gonna be some good stuff I'll do other video another video sometime on some homemade homemade sauces and rubs just kind of get that good and coded up and from there we just put the lid back on and we're gonna let it go for 30 minutes from there so that should take us right into the six-hour mark on these ribs we've been going 5 and a half hours now so 6 will be the finishing point we'll be back shortly to have a look when they're done okay folks we're at the 6 hour mark and it just so happens that it turned out to work out at about 6 hours it's not going to do that all the time this meat will be ready when it's ready it's not there's no time trick to it I showed you the bend test a little earlier but the other another test you can do is take a toothpick to find out if this meats ready or not and just stick it in it shouldn't stick it in between the bones it should slide right in with very little or no resistance whatsoever this meat is ready so we are going to pull it off and take it inside then I'll show you what we're gonna do from there do not pull your temperature probes by the wire if you're using them I'm gonna grab this guy by the thick end here and pick him up and let him over here on cutting board and we'll put the lid back on the kettle I have too much glare out here we'll go inside and have another look okay the first thing we're going to do here is cover these guys up with a little bit of oil let them rest for 15 minutes or so let the juices redistribute before we cut that meat then we are going to cut some we'll have a few for dinner and then we'll go vacuum seal the rest of it this procedure that we've done today is uh is an easy and easy procedure on the cattle grill it doesn't take a whole lot of work takes a little practice to learn how to control the temperatures on that so if I may suggest if you want to try something like this before you actually put meat on the grill take an afternoon when you're not busy and practice with the grill and make sure you know how to control the temperature with the airflow you don't want to put a put a nice cut of meat on the grill and then lose control of it so I highly recommend trying it out you know test it see if you can maintain the temperatures the way you want to you're gonna run into a lot of people that have telt that'll tell you this way I've prepared these ribs today is not the best way to do it there's a lot of people that want to foil their ribs at some point during the cook which is fine there is a there's a lot of merit to that but this video is just a basic instructional video on how you can cook something like this on your charcoal grill and not have to worry too much about it once you learn the basics of controlling your grill and cooking a piece of meat like this then spend a little time getting into the more advanced cooking techniques like foiling part of the way through there's a lot of merit to that I'll never argue it but in this particular instance we're just looking at the basics so we'll be back in a few minutes to cut these okay it's time to have a look we're gonna cut cut a couple of these ribs down and see what we've got get off that bone there - bones real close together there on the hand well they find the gap let's flip this guy over there we go okay there is our finished rib see we've got a nice smoke ring there it's good and hot let's have a bite mm-hmm that's good stuff that my friend is some good rib so now I'm going to plate a couple of these I'm gonna have some dinner and we'll come back or I'll come back later and cut the rest of those guys up and vacuum seal them and then they go in the freezer and I'll have ribs for a while so until next time give that a try let me know what you think and next time around in this video series we're going to have a look at a little different cooker we are going to take a look at the weber smokey mountain vertical bullet smoker it's a lot better smoker than the Weber Kettle for cooking for making long cooks we'll do an overview video on that cooker and then following that we'll cook a Boston butt so in the meantime enjoy

Channel: Man Cave Meals

Views: 202,336

Rating: 4.6833773 out of 5

Keywords: weber, kettle, grill, grilling, charcoal, pork, spare, ribs, st., louis, saint, cut, barbecue, bbq, smoke, smoking, hickory, wood, food, cooking, recipe

Id: N2uxABpOzbY

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2012