Smoking ribs on a Weber Gas grill - didn't turn out!!

T

TO_bbq

Guest
Hi Folks,
I just did my first slow cook of baby back ribs smoking them on my Weber Genesis gas grill and while the taste was there, they were kinda chewy, not really all that tender and didn't have a smokey flavour. I can't figure out what I did wrong. Here's what I did:

1. I removed the membrane and seasoned my ribs overnight in the Fridge.

2. I used a wood chip holder (triangle shaped fits between the flavourizer bars) - turned up the heat to high to get the box smoking on the far left side of my grill. I had soaked the apple wood chips for a few hrs before putting them in the box.

3. Once the wood was smoking, I reduced the far left burner to as low as possible in order to get the temperature down to ~225F. The thing is in order to get temps that low, the smoke was coming out very little at time at this level, not a lot of smoke was coming (like it was when high). From what I've read, you don't want tons of smoke coming out, but not sure if this was too low.

4. I put the ribs on the far right side of the grill for indirect grilling. I used
the 2-2-1 method here for the baby back ribs. I smoked the ribs for 2hrs indirectly @ ~225F.

5. After 'smoking' for 2 hrs, I wrapped the ribs in foil with apple juice and cooked for another 2 hrs in foil.

6. After the foil cooking, the ribs did look fairly tender. I took off the foil, added smoke again for the last hour and put on my bbq sauce in the last 20 mins. Not sure if this step overcooked the ribs?

Taste wise- ribs were good but they weren't tender even though the 2-2-1 method was supposed to ensure tender ribs. Also, the ribs *barely* had any smoke flavour. I think this was because there wasn't much smoke coming out of the smoker box in order to keep the temp at 225. If I turned up the smoker box burner higher (med-high), then a lot more smoke was coming out but then my temps were hitting 275F+. On my Weber, I had to choose b/w a lot of smoke vs. low temps.

So between the lack of smoke taste and not tender ribs - I don't think this was very successful - what did I do wrong and what should I try next time? This was the first time I cooked for 5 hours on my grill and I'm a bit disappointed with the result.

Any help would be great as I've smoked chicken on my rotisserie before and got a great smoky flavour (but that was smoking at 375F) but these ribs didn't work out as much as I hoped.

Thanks guys!
 
As you will see by looking at other posts, 275 isn't a bad temperature to use. You will also see that 2-2-1 is a guideline, not a cut-in-stone formula.

I haven't made ribs on a grill in 5 years, so I would suggest making a UDS or a Mini-WSM.

Just my 2 cents....
 
275 is a great temp for ribs as mentioned above. If you get smoke at 275, it's a win-win.

with baby backs i'd guess 2-1-1 would be a good guideline at that temp.

BUT, how are you measuring temperature? Please don't say the gauge on the lid of the gasser. It sounds like you did everything as well as you can with the equipment, but this seems like it could've been the alpha and omega of your problems.
 
Also, back before I had a proper setup and only had a gasser, I've had luck with gas grills putting the ribs (one slab only) on the top warming grate with a drip pan underneath, keeping the heat indirect.
 
Hi,
Thanks for the quick response - I'm totally new to smoking meat and just getting into this recently so not quite ready to build / buy a smoker yet (am looking at the bradleys / Green Mountain Pellet Grills quite closely though as they look pretty good).

I can definitely get more smoke at 275 and maybe that's why the ribs didn't have the smokey flavour i was looking for. For the 2-2-1 timing, should I try less cooking time? If I cook them more in foil, won't they overcook and become tough as well?

I'd like to master the ribs on my grill (if possible) then maybe next year get a formal smoker (will have more funds then too!).
 
A few thoughts... personally I despise the 3-2-1 or 2-2-1 or 4-3-2 or whatever time methods are out there. BBQ isn't cooked by time, it's done when it's done. Your ribs sound as if they weren't finished. Where were you getting your temp readings from? If it was from the guage in the grill cover then forgettaboutit. Those are hardly ever accurate, moreover dome temp will be much different than grate temp. So if you think you were at 225(which is too low IMO but some like it) your grate temp near the meat could've been teetering near 200 or less which is jerky makin temps. Get yourself an oven thermo that you know is accurate and place it on the grate next to the ribs. Also, forget about soaking wood chips, all it does is make them not want to smoke at low temps, and I'd ditch the smoke box idea and use an old cookie sheet. Lay it on top of your burners and sprinkle some chips on it. They'll smoke just fine, and if you need more smoke it's easy to add more chips-just leave the cook grate out on that side of the grill so you can quickly toss some in there. I don't smoke on a gasser, but I've had to do it a few times and the above setup worked ok. As for the ribs, whether you foil or not is up to you. They're done when they bend 90* when you pick em up with tongs in the center. There should also be about 1/2" of meat pullback on the bones. Hope that helps.

EDIT- I'll echo what others said about temp, 250-275 is a great temp range for great Q. Don't worry if it fluctuates a bit somewhere in between.
 
BB-Kuhn said:
275 is a great temp for ribs as mentioned above. If you get smoke at 275, it's a win-win.

with baby backs i'd guess 2-1-1 would be a good guideline at that temp.

BUT, how are you measuring temperature? Please don't say the gauge on the lid of the gasser. It sounds like you did everything as well as you can with the equipment, but this seems like it could've been the alpha and omega of your problems.
Click to expand...

BB-Kuhn: Oh ok, I didn't realize I could use 275F everything I read on the web says 225-250F. I'll try to kick up the heat a little so I can get more smoke. I did use the lid temperature, I have a maverick wireless probe so I guess I should use that so I know the temp on the racks not at the top of the BBQ? That's the temp that should read 275 right?

Still learning here, first time doing a long smoke!

BB-Kuhn said:
Also, back before I had a proper setup and only had a gasser, I've had luck with gas grills putting the ribs (one slab only) on the top warming grate with a drip pan underneath, keeping the heat indirect.
Click to expand...

The Genesis is big enough for me to keep the ribs far from the left burner heat source indirectly. I could use the warming grate but not sure if that would make a diff?

hachi-roku_fan said:
Did you check internal temp?

I think they needed more time
Click to expand...

I thought you can't check internal temp of ribs and you have to look at how far the meat is from the bones and do the 'twist' test? What temp should the ribs at at if I use my meat thermometer? Would this work?
 
Don't rely on time for cooking brisket, pulled pork, or ribs. Always go by the feel of the meat.

Your ribs sound like they were undercooked if they are not pulling away from the bone and tough. If you want to test for doneness you can use the bend test or you can do the toothpick test. The bend test is when the ribs bend 90 degrees but do not fall apart. The toothpick test you poke the meat between the bones and if it goes in like a knife through warm butter then it is done.

And since you are cooking on a gasser, you will get some smoke flavor, but nowhere close to what you would get with a true smoker. YOu can still put out fantastic bbq though and I definitely urge you to keep trying.
 
Me thinks you need to go to CL and scan for a cheap bullet to get you started smoking for real. Stop nail-biting and leave the gasser for grilling. You can always gift it to a buddy or put it back on CL when you upgrade.

Don't get me wrong. I love my gas grill and use it all the time (haters be hatin'). Just need the right tool for the job. Gas for the weekdays when you're working late, smoker for the weekends or when you cut out early.
 
225 is way to low for 2-2-1

I cook between 275-300 when the color is right I foil for one hour then firm them up and add sauce... perfect everytime....

on the grill make sure you have an oven thermometer right next to your meat to check the grill temp as the others said dont trust the gauge on the lid
 
Yeah man, sounds like you needed more time on the smoker. My father in law smokes on his Weber gasser all the time and makes some pretty good que. Just keep trying! To make sure they're done you only have to do two things. Pick them up with tongs and if they bend 90 degrees, they're good to go. I also poke between the bones with a toothpick. If it goes in with little to no resistance, they're done.
 
im more of a 3-1-.5 type cooker.. i like to keep mine in the smoke for longer than most.. aslo don't care for sweet flavor's on my ribs.. like a little bit of a salty, spicy flavor going on my ribs..
 
+1 for higher temp...I'd go 275°+ until they pass the bend test. and I wouldn't bother with foil, either. Just throw 'em on the rack until they look like this:

1D881EF4-EF61-48F9-AD11-247337BF4C0C-3413-000002A8EA62C582_zpsc72586ab.jpg
 
My youngest daughter has eaten her share of ribs in her life time but the one she raves about are the ones I cooked on the gas grill. It was a complete last minute deal when I did not have enough room on the smoker for all the ribs and I did not want to waste time setting up another smoker. I just fired up the gas grill.

My set up was basically like the one you described but with the following differences:

1. I put a small pan of water on the grate over the low lit burner.
2. I put a cherry wood chunk un soaked on a piece of aluminum foil directly on the element guard.
3. My temp was 230 and the color on the ribs took 3 hours to develop before I wrapped them.

The cook really took 3-2-1 when on my other smokers it is more like 2.5-2-.50.
 
J-Rod said:
A few thoughts... personally I despise the 3-2-1 or 2-2-1 or 4-3-2 or whatever time methods are out there. BBQ isn't cooked by time, it's done when it's done. Your ribs sound as if they weren't finished. Where were you getting your temp readings from? If it was from the guage in the grill cover then forgettaboutit. Those are hardly ever accurate, moreover dome temp will be much different than grate temp. So if you think you were at 225(which is too low IMO but some like it) your grate temp near the meat could've been teetering near 200 or less which is jerky makin temps. Get yourself an oven thermo that you know is accurate and place it on the grate next to the ribs. Also, forget about soaking wood chips, all it does is make them not want to smoke at low temps, and I'd ditch the smoke box idea and use an old cookie sheet. Lay it on top of your burners and sprinkle some chips on it. They'll smoke just fine, and if you need more smoke it's easy to add more chips-just leave the cook grate out on that side of the grill so you can quickly toss some in there. I don't smoke on a gasser, but I've had to do it a few times and the above setup worked ok. As for the ribs, whether you foil or not is up to you. They're done when they bend 90* when you pick em up with tongs in the center. There should also be about 1/2" of meat pullback on the bones. Hope that helps.

EDIT- I'll echo what others said about temp, 250-275 is a great temp range for great Q. Don't worry if it fluctuates a bit somewhere in between.
Click to expand...



I've never temp'd a rack of ribs. Personally, I don't care what the IT is. The rack of ribs is done when it passes either the pull or bend test. Not before.

While I do disagree with J-Rod that BBQ isn't cooked by time, I agree with everything else he said. Good BBQ comes, primarily, from experience. You'll be confident that it's done or tender enough or smoked enough, or dark enough or whatever enough, when you've cooked enough to be able to KNOW.

As far as the "time" thing......I also used to think that timing was irrelevant. Then I started cooking competition BBQ, where TIME is a very important, if not THE most important factor. We cook our comp ribs on a strict TIMELINE. We never temp them. We never test them. or pull or poke of bend them. We start at a specific temp, cook for a specific time, wrap in foil and cook for a specific time and pull them off to unwrap, sauce and rest for a specific time. To this day, it still surprises me that we get extremely consistent results with our ribs EVERY SINGLE TIME. I say this, only to demonstrate that you CAN get great results based upon a timed cook.



Thing is.......that timeline was derived based upon a lot of cooking with a lot of observations. So, I guess it IS all about the experience. :wink: :becky: :thumb:

You just have to know all the VARIABLES.
As J-Rod pointed out, you have many that you may not be addressing with your current set up.

* Cooker temp.....oven thermo or grill thermo? How do you KNOW what the temp is at the grate where the ribs are?
* Smoke.....soaking chips? NOT soaking chips? Where to place them?


Another thing to think about is that gas grills typically don't have as tight a fitting lid-to-base. There is usually some air gaps between the lid and the base so that the gas can vent. It's not as tightly sealed a cooker as a typical smoker is (HAS TO BE). In order to have more air (read: fire/heat) control, most smokers need air tight seals so that one can better control the air to the fuel. This also prevents a lot of drafts that you may get with a gas grill, also messing with what you THINK your temps are doing.



In short (after all that rambling :rolleyes:).......sounds like you needed to cook them longer.

Keep it up. Keep cookin. It just gets easier and better the more you do.
 
cheeaa said:
Yeah man, sounds like you needed more time on the smoker. My father in law smokes on his Weber gasser all the time and makes some pretty good que. Just keep trying! To make sure they're done you only have to do two things. Pick them up with tongs and if they bend 90 degrees, they're good to go. I also poke between the bones with a toothpick. If it goes in with little to no resistance, they're done.
Click to expand...

Perfect, I will try that next time, you guys might be right, I think it was undercooked still. I'll definitely use my Maverick thermometer next time to know the grill temperature accurately (instead of the dome temp).

DownHomeQue said:
im more of a 3-1-.5 type cooker.. i like to keep mine in the smoke for longer than most.. aslo don't care for sweet flavor's on my ribs.. like a little bit of a salty, spicy flavor going on my ribs..
Click to expand...

I think the 0.5 is key as I think things got a bit dried out in the last hour...

fantomlord said:
+1 for higher temp...I'd go 275°+ until they pass the bend test. and I wouldn't bother with foil, either. Just throw 'em on the rack until they look like this:

1D881EF4-EF61-48F9-AD11-247337BF4C0C-3413-000002A8EA62C582_zpsc72586ab.jpg
Click to expand...

Great pic, I'll definitely look for that and use 275 as everyone is suggesting. That will give me a lot more smoke and I'll test as suggested. If I don't use foil - don't I need a water pan to add moisture? Won't it dry it if I don't use foil?


John Bowen said:
My youngest daughter has eaten her share of ribs in her life time but the one she raves about are the ones I cooked on the gas grill. It was a complete last minute deal when I did not have enough room on the smoker for all the ribs and I did not want to waste time setting up another smoker. I just fired up the gas grill.

My set up was basically like the one you described but with the following differences:

1. I put a small pan of water on the grate over the low lit burner.
2. I put a cherry wood chunk un soaked on a piece of aluminum foil directly on the element guard.
3. My temp was 230 and the color on the ribs took 3 hours to develop before I wrapped them.

The cook really took 3-2-1 when on my other smokers it is more like 2.5-2-.50.
Click to expand...

John - I was thinking that I could just use a wood chunk instead of wood chips but would it ignite and smoke or could it catch on fire? Also, should the water be under the lit burner or under the ribs (burners not lit) and why? I'll give this more thought, I'm happy to hear that it's not impossible to do this on a gas grill. I get the limitations but I figure if I can do a descent job on the gas grill (knowing how to do it) it will only make things easier for me in the future when I buy that smoker.

Wampus said:
I've never temp'd a rack of ribs. Personally, I don't care what the IT is. The rack of ribs is done when it passes either the pull or bend test. Not before.

While I do disagree with J-Rod that BBQ isn't cooked by time, I agree with everything else he said. Good BBQ comes, primarily, from experience. You'll be confident that it's done or tender enough or smoked enough, or dark enough or whatever enough, when you've cooked enough to be able to KNOW.

As far as the "time" thing......I also used to think that timing was irrelevant. Then I started cooking competition BBQ, where TIME is a very important, if not THE most important factor. We cook our comp ribs on a strict TIMELINE. We never temp them. We never test them. or pull or poke of bend them. We start at a specific temp, cook for a specific time, wrap in foil and cook for a specific time and pull them off to unwrap, sauce and rest for a specific time. To this day, it still surprises me that we get extremely consistent results with our ribs EVERY SINGLE TIME. I say this, only to demonstrate that you CAN get great results based upon a timed cook.



Thing is.......that timeline was derived based upon a lot of cooking with a lot of observations. So, I guess it IS all about the experience. :wink: :becky: :thumb:

You just have to know all the VARIABLES.
As J-Rod pointed out, you have many that you may not be addressing with your current set up.

* Cooker temp.....oven thermo or grill thermo? How do you KNOW what the temp is at the grate where the ribs are?
* Smoke.....soaking chips? NOT soaking chips? Where to place them?


Another thing to think about is that gas grills typically don't have as tight a fitting lid-to-base. There is usually some air gaps between the lid and the base so that the gas can vent. It's not as tightly sealed a cooker as a typical smoker is (HAS TO BE). In order to have more air (read: fire/heat) control, most smokers need air tight seals so that one can better control the air to the fuel. This also prevents a lot of drafts that you may get with a gas grill, also messing with what you THINK your temps are doing.



In short (after all that rambling :rolleyes:).......sounds like you needed to cook them longer.

Keep it up. Keep cookin. It just gets easier and better the more you do.
Click to expand...

Wampus: Cook temp was with dome so I'll use my Maverick for grate temp and I soaked my chips, others have suggested not to and I'll give it a shot too - as long as they don't catch on fire, I should be ok. I agree the gas grill has limitations due to venting but like I said I've done a great job with mesquite and a rotisserie chicken on the weber so I believe I should be able to do the same with the ribs for now. As for the timings, I agree I need to experiment more and figure out what works for my grill in the climiate I'm in and the location the grill is, I think turning the temp up will help alot and should solve most of the problems I had.

I'll give it a shot again and see what happens...Here's the summary:

1. Use grate temp, not dome temp @ 275, 225 is too low to get smoke on the gas grill.
2. Use bend test to make sure ribs are done (mine have not be ready yet).
3. Use 2-2-1 as a guide but also use judgement.
4. Add a water pan in the grill (over the burner?) to add moisture.
5. Don't necessarily soak wood chips at low temps or they won't smoke much, even consider using a single wood chunk in foil (will have to try this).
6. Keep trying and don't give up it will get there **** :razz:

Thanks guys, I was pretty frustrated and I looked around online and various msg boards and none came up with these recommendations. I will definitely give this a try and I'm sure it will turn out better. Great message board!!
 
Not trying to be funny...but gas cookers are for burgers dogs and steaks, not ribs
 
John - I was thinking that I could just use a wood chunk instead of wood chips but would it ignite and smoke or could it catch on fire? Also, should the water be under the lit burner or under the ribs (burners not lit) and why? I'll give this more thought, I'm happy to hear that it's not impossible to do this on a gas grill. I get the limitations but I figure if I can do a descent job on the gas grill (knowing how to do it) it will only make things easier for me in the future when I buy that smoker.
Click to expand...

I do not have a problem with the wood chunks igniting when I lay them on my flame guard. I threw my wood chip box away many years ago since I never really saw it smoke once worth a damn. I have used uncooked wood chips wrapped in aluminum foil and that has worked better than the box.
I put the water pan directly over the lit burner (on the grate) and I feel it really helped the cook. I think it kept a level of moisture up in the cooking area and helped me keep the temperature down to 230. I just put a sheet of aluminum foil under the ribs (beneath the grill) to help with clean up.
 
TO_bbq said:
Great pic, I'll definitely look for that and use 275 as everyone is suggesting. That will give me a lot more smoke and I'll test as suggested. If I don't use foil - don't I need a water pan to add moisture? Won't it dry it if I don't use foil?
Click to expand...
--nope. I don't foil anything, and haven't had an issue with my stuff drying out

TO_bbq said:
I'll give it a shot again and see what happens...Here's the summary:

1. Use grate temp, not dome temp @ 275, 225 is too low to get smoke on the gas grill.
2. Use bend test to make sure ribs are done (mine have not be ready yet).
3. Use 2-2-1 as a guide but also use judgement.
4. Add a water pan in the grill (over the burner?) to add moisture.
5. Don't necessarily soak wood chips at low temps or they won't smoke much, even consider using a single wood chunk in foil (will have to try this).
6. Keep trying and don't give up it will get there **** :razz:
Click to expand...
--I wouldn't get too hung up on what the temperature really is...I did the rack in the pic above somewhere in the 300-325° range. I would suggest letting the grill settle in wherever it wants in the 250-350° or so range, and just cook it until it's done.
--and I would probably suggest using wood chunks over chips

good luck
 
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