Foiled Again!

An inspiration from Jim Minion lead me to try foiling again. He was a staunch anti-foiler before and lately has had good results with it. To say the least I was shocked.

I picked up 3 racks of St. Louis Ribs about 3 lbs. each and rubbed them with my special pork rub. Put them on the grill and the temperature was out of control! I had left the lid off too long as I was removing the membranes, trimming the flaps, etc. I pushed the hot coals to the side to make a hole in the middle and then added more charcoal to slow down the heat and closed all of the vents including the top one. Finally I got it to a reasonable temp.

After 3.5 hours I took them out and the bark did not look hard and dry at all actually a little wet and soft. I then added some apple juice and rub and wrapped tightly in foil and put them in for 45 minutes.

Took them out and then applied a finishing sauce and cooked the sauce on to the ribs for 40 minutes.

Results?

Like most experiments some great, some good, and nothing bad.

The smallest rack of ribs that were on the bottom rack came out the best by far. Quite juicy and very good. Could have been a touch more tender.

The top rack was slightly dry and the worst of the three.

Conclusions: The ribs that were on the lower rack had a lower temperature and did not dry out at all. The top ribs were cooked at too high a temp and also needed an hour foiled instead of the 45 minutes.

The ratios that are the best I think are the 3-1-1 or 3.5-45-1 for St Louis ribs. On these larger ones of 3 lbs I believe that 3.5-1-1 is good too. As always temperatures no higher than 240-250 on the top rack is essential.