Smoky Baby Back Ribs on The Monolith Classic

Our new favourite customer gave me some Baby Back Ribs so I thought I should smoke them and do a video on smoking ribs. I had just run a demo evening on how to set up and use a Kamado using our Monolith Classic burn unit so I thought I would use that and smoke the ribs.

I do like to take the membrane off the back of ribs but these proved more than a match for me so I scored most of them. Some BBQ chefs prefer to score, I think the membrane is bitter as well as chewy but at least by scoring them the ribs will absorb some flavour and smoke. I also like to marinade pork in orange or apple juice as the acidity breaks the meat down making them more tender and the fruit of course adds flavour. You can do this overnight but I’ve found two to three hours to be enough if you are running short on time.

So I knocked off the ash from the previous days cook, added fresh lumpwood charcoal and banked it to the side. I then placed three (in the end) firelighters at the base of the charcoal and light them. Why bank it? Well heat rises so by doing this it gets going much quicker. Whilst there is flame I leave the front vent wide open (fire needs air) and the lid open but when the fire dies down and the charcoal is light I shut the lid and open the top vent fully. After a few minutes when the temperature gauge starts to move I open the lid, spread the charcoal out and close the lid damping the front and top vents as the kamado starts to get close to my target temperature which being double lined ceramic doesn’t take long so keep you eyes on it.

I got the Monolith Classic to 300F (150 C) and placed my seasoned ribs on the racks. To season I added Dragons Salt first as this is a coarse seasoning that adds salt, pepper and various herbs and spices and then added the finer Smoky BBQ seasoning to add a bit of sweat heat to the ribs! I left them on the grill for and hour and 20 minutes, why the 20 mins? I got held up, it should have been and hour so they were a tad overdone at this stage. I then wrapped the ribs in aluminium foil with BBQ sauce and brown sugar, I would normally add some more orange juice at this stage but I had used it all so I didn’t this time. I then sealed them up (carefully so as not to puncture the foil) and placed them back on the Monolith still at 300 F (150 C) for another hour to moisten up.

Now I normally take the ribs off the barbecue leave them in their foil and rest them for 20 to 30 minutes but I watched one of the BBQ chefs put them back on the barbecue to glaze up which I think is a great idea, providing that you don’t get waylaid again and leave them on too long! Fortunately I did leave one rack wrapped and these were most definitely the tenderest but I think if they just had 10 minutes instead of near 30 they would also have been very good but as it was they dried out a tad. Still tasty just not as moist as they should have been, oh well, the joys of retail!