St. Louis Ribs on the SmokeFire

My wife asked for ribs for Sunday dinner, so I thawed out a rack of Creekstone SLCs. Since I needed to do some troubleshooting with the SmokeFire to provide more info to Weber, it got the call and I hoped for the best.

The pellet hopper was emptied, and a 5 lb. bag of Kingsford 100% Hickory pellets got dumped in. Set the temp at 250, put one of the Weber SF probes and an InkBird probe in grate holders near the PID thermometer and let it run for 1 hour to see if it would behave. While the SF was doing that, the ribs got hit with Sir Porkalot's Rib Rub on both sides, and then back in the fridge.

An hour in, so far, so good. Ribs went onto the cooker. After an hour of cooking (2 hours of runtime), both probes began showing big temp swings. The InkBird showed more drastic swings (206 - 320) than the Weber SF (215 - 300). Around 3.5 hours in, it was running low on fuel, so another 5 lb. bag went in the hopper. 4.5 hours in, the ribs were starting to probe nicely. We usually don't sauce ribs, but wife wanted to try Stubb's Dr. Pepper BBQ Sauce on them. They got glazed with sauce, another 30 minutes to set, and pulled them off. Despite the temp swings, they came out great! The Stubb's Dr. Pepper sauce was good as a glaze and an accompaniment to Sir Porkalot's Rub, but adding any additional sauce was unpleasant.

Shiz-Nit said:

Looks great.
How do you like that Weber Smoke Fire?

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Despite being a Gen 2, it's been quirky. The temp swings in this cook were less severe than in the past, but they seem to get worse the longer the cook goes. I have a ticket open with Weber on it. It's great at grilling, produces good smoke flavor, and makes good food when not being temperamental, but it's not a set-it-and-forget-it cooker. At least mine isn't - I know some folks have had better experiences with theirs.

HogGrog said:

Pretty ribs!

How did you like the Kingsford Hickory pellets?

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They made good smoke and seemed to produce a little less ash. They still exhibited the same feeding issues from the hopper that I've had with every other pellet, including Weber's.

Happy Hapgood said:

...and I have to ask about your evaluation of the Inkbird temps. Did you think they were closer to actual pit temp than the factory probe?

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The Weber PID grill controller never said it went over 250. It almost always read 250/250 (set/actual). A couple times the actual went lower than 250, but not as often as either the IB or Weber probes showed it to.

Towards the end I dropped a 2nd InkBird probe in. It's temps tracked within 3 degrees of the 1st IB probe. I tend to believe the IB, but am going to add a third thermometer to the mix next time in an attempt to see who is closer to the truth.