Smoking ribs with a Weber Q 2200: a retrospective
The forecast for last Saturday in Berlin was “nice and sunny”, perfect for BBQ.
This time I wanted to try something different than what I usually do, so I did some research on whether it is possible to smoke ribs on the Weber Q 2200. I found some videos on youtube, I found some recipes online, and I looked for tips and additional material in one of my BBQ recipe books.
I came up with a to do list, visited the Weber shop to buy the accessories for my Weber Q 2200, and planned for a relaxing Saturday afternoon where I’d prepare the ribs and slowly smoke them while enjoying some beer and music.
This post is about how it went and what I’ll try to do different next time.
Short summary: the ribs were delicious, with some room for improvement.
The “battle plan”
I cook quite often, and fairly often I look up recipes depending on the ingredients I have at home. Usually, I find inspiration in cooking blogs, where there are beautiful and inspiring photos, a list of ingredients and some instructions. This is ok for simple things like pasta or side dishes, but I find it difficult to follow for more complex recipes or for things that require several steps spanned across a long time.
My smoked ribs had the additional challenge of having input from different sources (videos, blogs, recipe books).
Therefore, I decided to collect all the information I needed in one “battle plan”, a foolproof checklist of ingredients and steps that as long as I followed, nothing could go wrong.
I opened up Google Docs, created a new presentation, set the page size to A3 and noted down all the ingredients and steps, including waiting time in between steps, to ensure I’d not forget to set a timer.
When I was done, I printed it out in A3 and kept it next to me on the working area in the kitchen.
In retrospective, having this plan really helped. First of all, having it all in front of me helped with figuring out more or less when to start preparing the ingredients and the ribs in order to eat at a reasonable time.
Having it on paper also meant that I did not need to reach for my phone with dirty hands, and had the additional advantage of being able to simply add notes next to each step to improve the plan for next time.
You can have a look at the improved battle plan and download it if you want to give it a try. Feel free to comment directly on the Google Docs document if you have improvements to suggest.
Challenges of smoking on the Weber Q 2200
Indirect cooking
Usually, when you smoke on a gas grill, you go for indirect cooking by switching on one burner on one side and placing the meat on the other side.
This is unfortunately not possible with the Weber Q, which is designed with the direct grilling use-case in mind and only has one burner. As a workaround for this, Weber sells (at least in Europe) a roasting shield that reflects the heat away from the meat and a roasting rack that keeps the meat a couple of centimeters from the grate. As Weber explains in their blog, it is possible to replace the roasting shield and the roasting rack with a foil pan and a grilling pan, but because I don’t have a grilling pan either, I just bought roasting rack and shield.
Cooking at low temperature
The other challenge is temperature-related: the minimum temperature inside the Weber Q 2200 is too high for smoking ribs. I am still trying to figure out how to address it for next time.
Here’s what happened. As prescribed by my battle plan, I put the smoking pouch on the grate and preheated the grill on high. As expected, after 10 minutes, the wood chips were producing smoke. I put the ribs on the roasting rack and with the roasting shield I put them on the grate and lowered the temperature to low.
Ribs should be smoked at 120°C (250F), but I couldn’t get the temperature lower than 150°C (302F). This means my ribs cooked a bit too quickly (about 2 and a half hours) and they weren’t as tender as they should have been. Doesn’t mean they were bad, not at all, I just would have wanted to make them more tender. One thing that I did try, was to keep the lid slightly open with a small ball made of aluminum foil: didn’t help at all, the temperature did not noticeably decrease.
I read somewhere that the porcelain enamel grates are really good at retaining heat. For this reason, it is recommended to pre-heat on low instead of on high. This is something I’m definitely going to try next time, so I updated the battle plan accordingly.
Improvements to the recipe and the battle plan
Dry rub
For this recipe, I used a brown-sugar-based rub, more or less with the same ingredients listed in this video. You can see the dosage in the battle plan. The quantity was perfect for the amount of ribs, but then a lot of the sugar just melted on the roasting shield, which now is far from being reusable. In the video there isn’t that much melted sugar, I wonder why. Maybe it’s because I forgot to open very well the holes at the bottom of the shield, however I’d rather have all that burned sugar on the roasting shield than all over my bbq. Maybe, if I figure out how to solve the low temperature issue above, the sugar will also melt less.
Other than that, the rub gave a very nice flavor to the ribs. The only small problem was that with that amount of chilly powder the ribs were a bit too spicy for my 3 years old daughter. I just removed the outside part of the ribs for her (and ate it myself, it’s the most delicious part!) and she was fine. Next time I might however try a different, less spicy, rub.
Side dish
We had a guest for dinner, so I decided we also needed a side to go with the ribs. My wife was out for the whole afternoon, so the side was also for me to make.
I went for some grilled vegetables (yellow and green zucchini and bell peppers) marinated in beer and spices. I took the recipe from here, replacing the lemon I forgot to buy with a spoon of brandy.
The result was good and tasty, although not so much improvement over the grilled vegetables I usually make, marinated with just olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano. Having to prepare also a side made, however, the ribs smoking experience not as relaxing and zen as I thought it’d be. I had to use the 30 minutes breaks in between brushings to wash and cut vegetables, prepare the marinade, marinate the vegetables, etc.
The final phase was also a bit rushed, as I had to remove the ribs from the grill, heat it up on high and while the ribs were kept warm at 80°C (175F) in the oven, grill the veggies.
Next time, I may try a different side, have someone else help me and maybe pick something that doesn’t need to go on the grill at the end. Either that, or I am thinking of making the ribs as appetizers and then grill some other meat with some veggies or corn.
What went well
After the extensive analysis of what I would like to improve for next time, I am going to wrap up by talking about what went well.
BBQ Sauce
For the BBQ sauce I chose the Sweet Baby Ray’s Original BBQ sauce. They had it at the Weber shop and had very good reviews on Amazon, and I have to say it was a great choice.
Taste
The taste was magnificent. It was the perfect balance between sweet, spicy and smoky. The pairing with grilled vegetables was also quite good, although, if I really need to find something to complain about, I would say corn is probably a better side for this kind of ribs.
Beer Pairing
I did some research on the right beer pairing for ribs and BBQ in general. I found that stouts and dark beers are a good pairing. I also found that a good pairing is the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a smoked beer that I had tried a couple of times and I really liked, so I thought I’d go for this one.
Unfortunately, at the local supermarket they did not have any, so I had to come up with a backup plan. After browsing the shelves back and forth for a while, I settled for a Störtebeker Starkbier.
What a great choice! This dark beer enhanced the sweet and spicy flavor of the ribs, so it was really a good pairing.
Music background
For the musing background while cooking, I decided to go with Jazz. I found this album “Cooking with Jazz” on Spotify a while ago, and I thought it would be appropriate for a relaxed Saturday afternoon spent smoking ribs.
Final thoughts
All in all, the 4 hours I spent on this weekend project were time well spent. The result was delicious, and I already have some learnings to improve next time. Some of these learnings are already included in the updated battle plan for smoking ribs on a Weber Q 2200 which you can download and print out when you want to try making these delicious ribs yourself.
