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Smoked Pork Ribs on the Ziggy Triple Grill – Take 1

Ziegler & Brown Smoked Ribs

I recently purchased a Ziggy by Ziegler & Brown Triple Grill, partly because my ten year old BBQ was too hard to maintain and partly because I was interested in stepping into the wonderful world of smoking meat. The Ziggy gave me the flexibility I was after without having to purchase two different bits of equipment.

This is my “guide” to smoking meat on the Ziggy, I use the guide loosely because I am still learning and wanted to share my experiences smoking meat with a Ziggy hopefully to save someone out there some time from making the same mistakes I have, so with I give you the first take:

So what did I buy with my Ziggy? Besides the Ziggy Triple Grill and Stand from Barbequeus Galore, I purchased the following to get my first smoke up happening. I kept it simple/cheap for my first, I didn’t want to ruin expensive ribs or waste expensive rubs/sauces.

Preparing the Pork Ribs

Ok, straight up this was a rushed smoke out, I was so excited about smoking my first rack that I didn’t trim off any excess fat, there wasn’t a lot and I definitely didn’t remove the membrane from the back of the ribs, I recommend doing both, specially the membrane removal, you watch how it it’s done here.

The Dry Rub

I went with Masterfoods Dry Rub mix because it was cheap and I was lazy, it had all the key dry ingredients I was going to buy separately and all the work had been done for me. I did, however, mix in a tablespoon of brown sugar, a couple of teaspoons of chilli flakes and a teaspoon of smoked paprika to about 6 teaspoons of Masterfoods dry rub and rubbed this all over the two racks. I found that the membrane prevented me from get into the meat on the underside of the ribs, which really reduced the flavour of the ribs.

Prepping the Ziggy

I set the Ziggy up with the Ziegler & Brown Cast Iron Baking Dish and fired up one of the side burners on the high to kick things off. I then filled the Ziegler & Brown Smoker Box with Apple BBQ Smoking Chips and placed it on the lit side burner and waited for it to start to smoke up. Filling the baking dish with about 2 cups of apple juice.

  • My Ziggy sitting on my Old BBQ, this didn’t last!

The Smoking

Once the smoker box started to smoke I dropped the side burner to the lowest setting and placed the ribs inside the Ziegler & Brown Cast Iron Baking Dish, closed the lid and said a little prayer.

I let it smoke for a good 30-45 minutes and then glazed it with sauce, this was my first mistake, why? I just stopped any chance of the smoke actually penetrating the meat! I then let is smoke for another 1.5 hours and basted once or twice, I’m an idiot, I know!

Maintaining the temperature on the Ziggy was easy, one burner on low kept it at a constant 150°C but looking back it sitting at 150°C for most of the cook was too high! I’ve learnt a few things to get this down which I will share in my next post.

After a couple of hours of smoking, I wrapped the ribs and cooked them up for a further couple of hours. At this stage, the smoker was not smoking at all and it was purely continuing to cook the ribs at 150°C.

After 4-4.5 hours of cooking I removed the ribs from the foil, gave them another coat of BBQ sauce and cooked for a further 1 hour and I was done.

I let them rest for about 15 minutes and they were all eaten in less than 10 minutes. The meat was a little dry but the rub and sauce were delicious, although there was not a lot of smokey flavour to the ribs, I had no complaints from the family. The chilli flakes and sugar addition to the Dry Rub, really paid off!

What did I learn?

  • Don’t rush prepping pork ribs, get rid of the membrane! It lacked flavour on the underside of the ribs and I hit a stark contrast in the flavour of the meat.
  • Don’t glaze your ribs with sauce in the first hour or two, this was a major fail!
  • Don’t accidentally put your ribs over direct heat like I did when they were in foil, one rack had a very dry/crunchy end that tasted good but wasted the meat.
  • Don’t cook your ribs for too long if you’re sitting at 150°C for the entire cook, this should have been 1-2-1 hour cook up, with 1 hour uncovered, 2 hours in foil and up to 1 hour glazed. I will go into this a little further with my next cook up.
  • Smoking ribs are actually quite easy, so give it a go!

I hope this helps you and I’ll see you at the next smoke up – Reyan

Reyan
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