I've been smoking ribs for years over charcoal and wood. But before I had a pair of smokers and a pair of charcoal grills, I had a gas grill. I've grilled hundreds of meals on that gas grill and to this day I love that it provides immediate grilling access with zero grill preparation. But could it be possible to smoke ribs, low and slow, on the old blue flamer? Many commercial pits are gas fired with wood added for flavor (Ole Hickory, Souther Pride, etc) and they can turn out some pretty killer 'cue (Blue Smoke, 17th Street Barbecue, Fette Sau, for example).... so I figured it was worth an honest effort. Read on for the results!
I fired up the gas grill on high for twenty minutes, at which point I had a 500 degree cooking area. I then tossed on a two-foot long foil pack of soaked apple and hickory wood chips onto the back burner (under the grates), and turned off the middle and front grates. I closed the cover, waited for smoke to appear, and the temp to get in the 220 degree range. 10 minutes later I saw this:
So I placed a few "slabs" of rib tips left over from triming a bunch of spare ribs to st. louis cut. These were rubbed all over with my BBQ Billy's Shake (1 part rub, 1 part white sugar, 1 part granulated brown sugar). The meat sat at least 6-8 inches away from the flame, and the flame was directly under the foil smoker packs:
From this point on I treated the grill as I would my smoker. I monitored temp, and adjusted that back burner if it got too hot. I ended up settling on a medium-high flame to keep the entire grill around 220/230. The foil packs generated a lot of smoke for 1.5 hrs, after which point it settled down to a relatively moderate amount. I sprayed the rib tips with cider after 2 and 3 hrs. At the 3.5 hr mark I mopped on a new sweet sauce (cider, molasses, brown sugar, ketchup, and BBQB shake), then after a total of 4 hrs the rib tips were at 180 degrees and while they could have gone another 30 minutes, we were famished so I pulled em off. Here's a shot directly off the grill:
I then sliced 'em up, and served with cole slaw and corn bread:
The results? Truly outstanding! They had a wonderful smoke flavor... not quite as significant as an all-out smoked rib from my Weber Smokey Mountains, but absolutely present. They were tender, juicy, and had a wonderfully carmelized bark. I stumbled across the sauce, just adding a few ingredients I had in the kitchen and I'm really pleased with it. Its very simple, and the first time I've made a sauce without any form of vinegar! I usually need that vinegar hit to cut the richness/fat levels of ribs, but the apple cider did a good enough job here and the flavor combinations were teriffic.
I'd like to try the whole approach with a few slabs of st louis cut to confirm I'm onto something, but after this first run I think I'm, well, onto something!
