Monday, January 18, 2010

Ribs-Round 2



I was watching BBQ Pitmasters (see link) and I decided to give some of their techniques a try. It's probably common knowledge but I learned some cool things.
1. Apple juice
All of the pitmasters use a spray bottle and apply apple juice to all of their meats every fifteen minutes. I tried this with my ribs and some chicken breasts and the difference was amazing. I found that I could cook longer and keep the meat moist the whole time. I also noticed a better flavor in the chicken breasts.
2. Foiling
Another method that the pitmasters use is foiling. They won't give away their secrets on the show or online, but after some research I found a good rule of thumb. The 3-2-1 rule is to divide your cooking time into six equal parts-use three of the parts straight on the grill (spraying every fifteen minutes with juice), 2 of the parts in foil, and then straight back on the grill while you apply your sauce. On the show, they cooked them for six hours so each part was one hour. I used more of a 3-1-1 rule because I was cooking my ribs for four hours, so I smoked the ribs straight for 2 hours, spraying them every fifteen minutes, then I wrapped them in foil with plenty of apple juice for one hour, took them out of the foil and spent the last hour applying sauce. It made a very noticeable difference in tenderness.

I just need to figure out how to make the sauce a bit more spicy and these will be excellent ribs. Any suggestions are welcome.

1 comment:

Bent said...

Nice recipe...I will have to try that. To spice up your sauce add Frank's Original Hot Sauce to taste and add little extra molasses to thicken it.