First low and slow

stichrunner

2nd cook and its gonna be a low and slow one. These baby's are plastic wrapped and in the fridge for tomorrow. 

NERVOUS

Best of luck...  Care to tell us more about your plans?

stichrunner

Im gonna try and hold about 225 to 235 for 3 hr. Then foil them with a little apple cider and butter and honey drizzled. For about 2 hr. Then unwrap and sauce them and cut the heat back and let them sit for 30 min give or take. Hopefully they taste good cause im on nights tomorrow and have a couple of guys that are already waiting to eat. I get nervous when i cook for other people. But when there eyes roll back in there head there is nothing like it. Oh i have never done this before. The only time i cooked ribs was on my Nepolean gasser and never new to wrap them and they were tough. 

bhedges1987

Your only problem is using baby backs and not spares

stichrunner

  I'm new to the smoking game. Is spare rib the same as St. Louis cause they had those and i had them in my hand but chose the bb's 

bhedges1987

Yeah spare and St. Louis is the same. Your fine with baby backs... In my part of the country people only make spares though. Was just messing with ya. 

dldawes1

I'm a BB man myself.  Your plan sounds solid and my only suggestion is to allow plenty of time. My ribs "usually" cook in 5-1/2 hours at around 260F with no foiling.  Your lower temp and foil at the end should come out "close" to the same.

I always plan to finish cooks ahead of time...you never know when a onry piece of meat decides to take longer than expected. It can happen. 

FTC will hold the ribs at temp for you for a couple hours (or longer) until your ready to eat.

Good luck and keep a temp/time log for future cooks. Keeping records with damper adjustments, etc, helped me through the learning curve. Now many repeated cooks have become unconscious methods.

stichrunner

Dldawes i hate to sound like a noob but what is FTC. I was actually thinking on cooking them a little early so i could get some rest before work. 

dldawes1

FTC...Foil (HDAF = Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil) when you pull off the egg. Then, wrap in Towel, then, put in a Cooler to let meat rest and hold until ready to eat.

Some folks put hot water in the cooler to get a warm start...I never do, just put it in and close the lid.

Everyone has their own method.

I've FTCd ribs for a few hours...no different than when first coming off the egg.  I've FTCd brisket and butts up to 5 hrs.

One difference might be the softening of a crunchy bark. But sometimes we must sacrifice to serve steaming hot food at the right time.

Hope that helped,

Donnie

Gunnar

Agree with dldawes1 about covering and the rest period...I've always considered the rest part of the cook and allow for additional time on low and slow.

stichrunner

Thank yall. Well I have the egg hot and ribs are on. The temp keeps wanting to creep up on me. I decided 250 would be a good number. I have 2 chunks of cherry and one pecan. The cherry smells amazing. I had the lower door open all the way with the screen closed and even with the petals closed it still wanted to creep up on me  i finally close down the bottom door to about a inch and it started turning and coming back down. I purchased the book smoke it like a pro on the recommendation of a buddy who said he follows the temp control method in the book and it works good. That's where i got the idea about wide open btm. 

rmr62

FWIW, I have a LBGE and find that it doesn't do well around 225 range, but if I go for somewhere in the 250-270 range, no problemo

dldawes1

rmr62..both my XLs like the 260 area as a low for L&S cooks. Never a problem...they produce the goods !!