Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Weber Jumbo Joe / Spare Ribs and More

The next few articles will be on the new style Weber Jumbo Joe kettle cooker which I find is one great little cooker for tailgating, beach, picnics, camping, apartment living,  etc.. Promise to do a complete review at a later date.

This first cook was done on a very cold morning with the ambient at 21degrees and the wind out of the North at about 14-17mph with a wind chill in the single digits. Kinda takes some of the fun out of the cook. 

I planned to cook a slab of spare ribs, some pit beans, and some potato wedges on the Jumbo Joe kettle.

I started by making up my pit beans in a glass loaf pan and added some brown sugar on top of the beans. I then trimmed, skinned, and scraped some fat off my slab of spare ribs and added some of my favorite rub. 

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I setup the kettle with one charcoal basket, a couple of fire bricks, and then placed my glass pan of beans on the charcoal grate. I wasn’t sure if this small amount of fire would work in this lousy cold weather and it turned out that it did just barely work. I wanted to run in a range of 275-300 and all it would do is about 225- 250 degrees with this setup and this lower temp adds one more hour to my cook.

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Added my optional hinged cooking grate and the ribs and got my cook started. 

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I cooked the ribs about 3-1/2 hours and then took them off to foil them with some sweet goodies. 

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The foiled ribs went back on the cooker along with some potato wedges that were oiled, buttered, herbed, salted and peppered. 

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Potatoes didn’t take very long and sure smelled good coming off of the cooker.

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Next step was to remove the ribs and also the pit beans from the cooker. I then unwrapped the ribs and placed them back on the kettle for the glaze. 

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I glazed the ribs a couple of times and pulled them.

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Picture shows them darker than they were.

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The meal came out great and I did learn a few things about this little kettle. I will add more fire for my next cook in the colder weather. I also used a little too much hickory for smoke and will lighten up on the next cook. This little tailgater still does a great job with some of my smaller cooking chores.

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