We arrived at Silver Falls State Park and even though it was snowing, we had to have barbecued baby back ribs. We'd already picked up two racks in town and they were burning a hole (kind of a large hole) in our fridge. We set up the Traeger pellet grill in the snow, loaded it with Washington apple wood pellets, and fired it up on its "smoke" setting.
While the grill was heating up, we took the "silver" off the back of the ribs (its a thin membrane that you should remove from the bone side of ribs before you cook 'em). We then sprinkled both sides with our rub as shown above (we'll give the recipe out…email us if you're interested).
Our cooking method is a variation on the 3-2-1 method of cooking ribs. In 3-2-1 you smoke the ribs for 3 hours, cook them wrapped in foil for 2, then sauce and finish them unwrapped for 1 hour. We used a variation because we didn't want to wait 6 hours for ribs! Our variation was more like 1-2-1. We smoked the ribs bone side down for 1 hour with the Traeger set on 180 degrees F, spritzing with our mop sauce every 30 minutes (recipe on request),
After 1 hour we wrap the ribs tightly in foil with a generous amount of the mop sauce inside (to keep the ribs moist and steam them a bit). We turn the Traeger up to 225 degrees F and cook the wrapped ribs for 2 more hours.
At the end of 2 hours, we unwrap the ribs and put them back on the grill. After 30 minutes we brush them with honey. After 10 more minutes we brush them with our homemade barbecue sauce (recipe on request). Then, we let them cook 20 more minutes to finish and tighten up the sauce.
When they're done we take them off the grill and let them rest about 5 minutes covered in foil before we cut them.
(Note from Laura: I made Kevin use the new zebra-striped knife for this photo…not sure it was the sharpest, but it seemed to work well enough.)
Ta-Da! Deliciousness.
(Posted by Laura & Kevin)
