Cold, raw, rain, and ribs!

Yesterday was a lousy day for cooking outside. I really would have rather made a nice plate of spaghetti and meatballs. But I'd taken these spare ribs out of the freezer intending to do them on Sunday, but events conspired against doing them on Sunday (when it was beautiful, 52* and sunny). So yesterday was 42*, windy and raining.



Eh.

I cut the ribs into St Louis racks. Part of this cook was to try making both the racks of ribs and also morsels from the skirt and flaps. This sentence will be the last time we speak of these morsels. there is a use for them, but it is not whatever I did. 



A friend of mine says he has a small Dutch oven with holes in the bottom that he puts his wood chunks in. As the chunks smolder, the smoke has nowhere to go but down, where the bad VOCs burn off and he is left with thin blue smoke. I didn't have a small Dutch oven with holes in the bottom, so I wrapped some apple wood loosely in a foil pouch, poked holes in the bottom, and tossed it on the fire. There is a fire underneath that pouch.




I let the wood heat up and smolder; the smoke indeed came out thin and blue:





The BGE held a steady 225* all afternoon, no DigiQ. I had recently calibrated the dome thermometer, so I skipped the Maverick because of the rain. After a while I popped the temp up to about 250*. The whole deal took a tad over 6 hours for the bounce test to indicate doneness. No crutch. These were some really meaty ribs.

The ribs came out really good.





That's about it. Just a rib cook. Thanks for letting me take my mind off other things by putting it here.