Happy Belated-Memorial Day Steak Nation!
I received a shipment from Dan-o’s Seasoning a few days ago (thank you Dan-o!) so I thought I’d take a steak-break, and smoke some ribs. I’ve smoked ribs a million times with dad and my brother, but never on my own. Besides not having expertise, I had one other big problem. I don’t have a smoker (yet)!
How to Turn a Weber into a Smoker
There’s a lot to consider before I invest in a smoker. Do I want something versatile like a Big Green Egg? Do I go purist and get a Traeger? What about this Kamado all the cool kids are talking about? Until I solve that problem - I’m relying on my trusty Weber. To make my Weber rib-friendly, I did some research, and adapted it to what I had on hand. Here’s what I did:
Step 1: Prep Meat
The night before smoke-day, I prepped my ribs. I made a dry rub by combining Dan-o’s Original Spicy Seasoning with some brown sugar, wrapped it in foil, and plopped it in the fridge overnight.
Step 2: Transform the Weber
Here’s what I used to turn my Weber into a smoker:
Disposable metal pans
Mesquite lump charcoal
Mesquite hickory wood
Bricks
I used bricks to separate my fire from the cooking area. Then I placed the metal tin filled with water on the bigger side of the kettle. I lit the lump charcoal in the chimney, waited for the coals to get white-hot, and transferred them to the one-third portion of the grill. I placed my Weber iGrill Mini thermometer on a brick over the pan of water, covered the grill and waited for the temp to drop to under 300. At that temperature, I figured taking the lid off and placing my room temperature ribs, would bring the cooking temperature down to my desired 250 degrees.
Step 3: Cook the Meat
With the lid removed, I placed my dry-rub ribs over the pan of water and added a few pieces of hickory wood over the hot coals. Then I replaced the lid, cracked a beer, and monitored the temperature - making sure it hovered around 250 degrees.
I read that a tip that blue, wispy smoke is desirable, and signifies a clean fire (white, billowy smoke will make your meat taste like garbage). Lo and behold - after about 15 minutes, my smoke was blue and wispy. Here’s where the Weber smoking experience gets tricky. It doesn’t take long for the kettle to start losing heat.
Within 45 minutes my temperature started dropping below 240 degrees and my blue wispy smoke was seemingly gone. It was already time to add fuel. I added another few chunks of charcoal and probably too many pieces of wood to my fire and the result caused a mild panic. Soon there was a cloud of white chalky smoke billowing into my backyard, had I failed already?
I quickly learned that maintaining temperature and ideal smoke requires minor adjustments and that the adjustments require some time to take effect. It’s like steering a large boat, it doesn’t turn on a dime.
Blue and wispy!
Step 4: Monitor
After the ribs were going for about an hour, I applied a marinade of red wine vinegar, beer, mustard, brown sugar and more of the Dan-O’s dry rub mixture along with another piece of charcoal and wood. I braised the ribs with that combo every 45 minutes(ish) for the next 4 hours - making sure the temperatue was sitting in the 225 to 260-degree range.
Braising the meat with Dan-o’s, red wine vinegar, brown sugar, beer & mustard
Step 5: Almost Chow Time
After ~4 hours, I started checking to see if the meat was receding from the bone. When it finally did, I pulled the ribs off, wrapped them in foil, and put them back on for another hour (I read a few different blogs that said both DO and DO NOT wrap the meat in foil. I decided to go for it.) The temp dropped to about 190 degrees by the end of that hour.
By then, I was practically starving to death, so I called it and pulled the ribs off the grill. I added a little more of the dry rub to my finished ribs and then let them rest about five minutes, or however long it took my wife to take these pictures.
Conclusion: Pros & Cons of smoking ribs in a weber
Pros:
Way cheaper than a smoker
That’s about it
Cons
High mainenance. Every time I pulled the cover off to do something, the temperature changed - which forced me to figure out a way to adapt
Finding the right amount of smoke is more difficult in a kettle
Meat was good, but not fall-off-the-bone. This could be user error, or it could be the kettle. I guess we’ll find this out when I get a smoker
The shape of the kettle limits how much meat you can smoke