MeatForge

After I enjoyed using the smoker as a grill for some time now, I spontaneously felt into a more brave project again. I bought some ready-to-grill spare ribs at my dealer of choice.

As I wanted to use those pre-rubbed and glaced ribs I was falling into the problem, that I found totally no recipe for it. Seems like everyone who is taking the time for seriously smoked ribs, does the full 3-2-1 method, which goes like this:

• rub the ribs with only spices
• smoke them at 120°C for 3 hours
• pack the rib with some apple juice, beer or similar, into aluminium foil
• steam it at 120°C for 2 hours
• add the glace
• smoke it at 120°C for 1 hour

I read, that 4 hours for those ready-to-grill ribs should be enough. I thought about it, and decided to adopt it to this method:

• pack the ribs with only some apple juice into aluminium foil
• smoke them for 2 hours
• unpack them
• smoke them for another 2 hours

My thoughts were:

• Smoking first doesn't work, as it will dry out the glace
• The steam will be essential that the meat doesn't dry out

After the planning we came to the practical part. I tried to build a minion ring, which became more of a minion field.

To get the poisen out of the cole brickets, I heated it up one hour ahead. After that I added the ribs, which were wrapped into the aluminium foil.

Becaus the cole had to much contact to the neighbors, the field burned down to quickly. It was no pain, as I had only 4 hours, where I already was grilling the rest of the stuff in the last hour. I simply heated up some new cole after 3 hours. This was in fact two hours after I added the ribs. I extended it with some dry wood and added some additional cole brickets for the final grilling process.

Hint: When adding cole or cole brickets, you need to take care, that it is heatened up already. Otherwise it might produce some unhealthy steam at the beginning. I am using a simple charcoal chimney to heat the cole brickets up outside of the tank, before adding them.

Result:
The result was Ok, but not amazing. It was real fun, and the ribs were really good. But I missed a bit of spice and a better carameliced glace.

During the process I encountered, that I have problems holding the heat, as the tank is to huge. When I think about elecetrification, I will need to add some protection against unwanted, external air to the cole area.