Get Your Grill On

Now that the semester at Shepherd University is getting underway I wanted to get some ribs on the Char-Broiler double door smoker for the incoming students. I ordered a case of Baby Back Ribs from our meat Vendor and to save time had them remove the membranes and package each one individually. There were about 80 lbs of ribs to the case, so I laid out the ribs and worked up a rub to get the smoke rolling. I put together Cajun seasoning, cracked black pepper, sea salt, garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red pepper and a touch of sugar for sweetness. I rubbed the seasoning liberally into both sides of the ribs and allowed them to sit for 3 hours to soak in the seasoning and then arranged them on sheet pans and placed them in a convection oven for 3 hours at 225 degrees.

After cooking in the oven for 3 hours I removed the ribs and placed them into a pan to transport to the smoker. It took some creative arranging but I got all the ribs into the double door smoker and had enough room to add some smoked stuffed jalapenos, but that’s another recipe. I used Charcoal to get the fire going in the firebox and threw hickory chips onto the pile to get some smoke going and then added my soaked hickory chips to a new cast iron smoker box that I picked up at the local Dollar General Store. It seems as if they had a few arrive by mistake and their mistake was my gain. The box worked perfectly and I added a hand full of chips every hour, thus ending my need to make hickory bombs out of wood chips and aluminum foil.

I kept the heat at a constant 225 – 250 degrees by adjusting the damper along with adding 8-10 charcoal briquettes to the firebox every 30-40 minutes. I did have a brief rain shower that required some additional briquettes but the fire stayed close to 200 degrees until the charcoal took off and then I adjusted the damper to offset too much heat.

I rotated the ribs in the smoker to make sure everything cooked evenly and after and additional 4 hours of smoking the ribs were ready to hit the table. I grabbed a large pewter platter and removed the ribs, wrapped them up in foil and took them back to the University for the next day’s lunch crowd. I wanted to see how they stood up to chilling and reheating for the next day and I must say they couldn’t have been more delicious.

The smoke flavor penetrated the meat nicely and was accompanied by some Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. The ribs were portioned into 3-4 rib sections after saucing them and setting the sauce to the ribs in a 375-degree oven for 25 minutes. The ribs almost made it to the end of lunch but we ran out before the meal was completed and probably could have used another 20-30 pounds. In all it was great success and I’m looking forward to more smokin’ and grillin’. Stay tuned!