My first foray into smoking ribs

Blame it on Cook's Illustrated.

Up until a few weeks ago, I'd been content with just learning what to grill. But then an article in the magazine indicated that not only was it possible to cook a rack of St. Louis-style spareribs on your grill, you could do it in a few hours.

The method uses about 1.5 hours on the grill and an hour in the oven. I readied myself for the challenge. I bought three racks of ribs (at $4.99/pound) from Your Dekalb Farmers Market and made sure I had all the ingredients for the rub and the basting sauce.

But then, the more I thought about it, I just figured I needed a smoker. Alton Brown hammered it home on his program on smoking that to properly smoke meat, you need to control time and temperature. Sure, you can do this on a gas grill -- it has a temperature gauge, doesn't it? But you need to be able to cook the ribs over indirect heat. I guess I could cook the ribs over burners that aren't on.

You also need a water pan to keep them moist. Sure, you can keep a tray of water in the grill and even leave a pan of wood chips out to give it the hickory flavor.

In the end, smoking-by-grill didn't seem to be the most efficient use of my grill or my time. Acquiring a smoker, although a little pricey, didn't seem to be any different than having a food processor on hand to pulse ingredients into chimichurri.

Anyway, I lit the fire using 75 briquets as the smoker's owner's manual indicated. I lit them using a non-liquid firestarter. Then I waited until the coals were nice and ashy.

I'd been soaking some wood chips in water and placed them on the coals.

Then I got the second stage of the smoker -- the body -- and placed it on top of the base with the coals. The water pan goes here, so I put it in place and then added a few jugs of water.

This particular smoker has two grills for smoking meat. I used the bottom one and left the top one out of the smoker.

I readied the spice rub -- a few tablespoons each of paprika, light brown sugar, a tablespoon of regular salt, a few teaspoons of chili powder, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and cayenne pepper. (The recipe called for a half teaspoon of dried thyme but I didn't have it).

The rub went all over the three racks of ribs. The owner's manual calls for you to remove the fatty membrane on the back of each rack but the Cook's Illustrated version said to leave it on to preserve the fattiness of the ribs. So I left it on. (In the end it was fine doing so).

Then I positioned the three racks of ribs vertically on a rib rack that sat on the grill, closed it up and started to monitor it.

Right away the temperature hit the 250 degree range that the owner's manual suggests for the ribs. The trick is maintaining the temperature. You can't open the top of the smoker because every time you do so, it will add 15 minutes to the time of cooking the ribs.

There is a side door, but when I opened it 45 minutes into cooking to baste the ribs with an apple cider-vinegar sauce, it was apparent that this door was not designed to access the meat. Instead it is to tend the fire and the water pan. So I decided to not mess with basting and leave the ribs alone.

After the first two hours, I noticed the temperature start to take a dip. Normally you can open the three bottom vents to increase the temperature but they were already open so I opened the side door and added about seven handfuls of coals.

This did the trick and soon the smoker was back to its proper temperature. But I had to do this each subsequent hour.

After about four hours, we settled in to dinner and after I ate, I checked on the ribs for the first time. Using an electronic thermometer, the internal temperature of the ribs read 189 degrees, which is pretty good for the first try.

I also used Alton Brown's criteria (besides his temperature test of 185 degrees to 190 degrees) to determine if the ribs were ready. You pick up a rack of ribs at its center using tongs and it should droop in a "U" shape and crack slightly. You should be able to bounce them gently and have the ribs also crack slightly. The meat also should easily pull off the bone but not fall off (a sign of overdoneness).

The meat looked really good. We achieved doneness. I pulled the racks out, left them in a roasting pan to rest and then divided them up into four-bone mini-racks for tailgating the next day.