Smoked Ribs and Rotisserie Pork - Now That's A BBQ

We celebrated the nations birthday in Rhode Island this year. It was an excellent trip which culminated in blowing up a rock with about 22 minutes of fireworks. See my post with the picture of the fireworks.

For this reason and the fact that my brother's birthday is the 9th we had a BBQ at our house. We pulled out the stops and had a keg of Mannys, 9 racks of smoked pork ribs and a rotisserie pork shoulder which we made into banh mi sandwiches

A good time was had by all!

Rib smoking station

9 Racks of ribs smoking

Smoking done - now we just let them cook until they fall apart

Zoo Tunes (Grace Potter and the Nocturnals)

Great way to spend an afternoon. Leaving work early and hearing some great music at the zoo. Mellow crowd with lot's of kids but Grace had everyone standing by the end of the show.

Seattle Summer Sunset

Asian Smoked Spare Ribs

The other day I fired up the grill for the first time to try it out. I chose to smoke some country style spare ribs. It was a bold choice for the first use of the grill but I had the spare ribs and I really wanted to try out the included smoker box.

Asian Smoked Country Style Spare Ribs

I started out by rubbing the spare ribs with Tom Douglas Spicy Tokyo Rub. I was a little worried since this rub seemed more for fish but it was all I had.

Once I had them rubbed I went to work setting up the grill for smoking.  I had some Weber 17053 Hickory Wood Chips, 3-Pound which I picked up at my local hardware store. I soaked a handful of them in water for about an hour before I pre-heat the grill. 

I put the chips in the smoker box, setup the grill for indirect heat cooking with smoker box over the burner. Turned on all the burners on high and pre-heated the grill to about 425 to get the chips smoking.

Once the grill was heated I turned all the burners off except the far left one with the smoker box. I then laid out my spare ribs on the far right side of the grill and closed the lid. I maintained a temperature of about 350 for 30 minutes or so without opening the lid to get them good and smokey.

After this I turned the grill down to about 300 and let them keep going for another 30 minutes. For the final 30 minutes or so I turned the grill up to 350 and basted the ribs with Marie Sharp's Exotic Sauce 5oz. - about 5 minutes on each side until they had a good sticky coating.

These turned out fantastic. Very tender with nice smokey flavor and a hint of Asian / tropical flair. These were pretty fatty which I think contributed to the tenderness after cooking them at low for a long duration.

This is what I did for the 4th of July

22 minutes of Mayhem

Lion 32 inch Stainless NG Grill on Cart Assembly

After much grill research I settled on the Lion 32 Inch Stainless Steel Natural Gas Grill On Cart. Needless to say I was a little excited about this purchase. 


I purchased the grill through Amazon but it's fulfilled by ShoppersChoice. Amazon claimed they had 13 in stock but after several days of the grill not shipping I had to call ShoppersChoice. They apologized and told me they are out of stock and will have more in by the end of the week. After doing a little more research I found this isn't the first time they've done this to people. Regardless, the customer service was great and once it was in stock it shipped quickly. I would definitely recommend this company but you may want to confirm if it's in stock if you have a time commitment.


Here is a somewhat step by step image visual documentation on the assembly.

Hot off the pallet

Heavy duty wheels.

Solid Stainless Cart

Paper towel holder!

Mostly assembled. Two person lift to get it on the cart!

Bolted onto the cart with the side tables.

Testing the interior lighting

Completed!

In it's new home!

Buying a New Grill

I have done an extensive amount of research on grills. Here is the condensed version:

Natural Gas is 3 times cheaper than propane. It will take a couple of years to pay for itself but add in the convenience of not running out of gas and I think this is the way to go. The estimate to have the gas line installed for me was $385 and that includes tax, permits and inspection.
Getting a grill that is setup for Natural Gas also adds to the price of the grill and reduces your number of options.
Grills can be put into 3 buckets, low-end, mid-range and professional series. I started looking at mid-range and then into the professional. There are a couple of brands that try to sit in the middle of the two but they tend to sacrifice quality in the structural parts to keep the cooking parts on par with the high end models.

After looking at about 100 grills I narrowed it down to several brands and models.

1. Weber
1. well made but expensive. To get what I wanted was well over $1k and then the other brands start to look better.
   
2. Broil King
1. Low end models sacrifice quality but the top-end models have all the features and have pretty good quality. top end models are still expensive.
3. Napoleon
1.  Most of their grills are high quality but the less expensive models are made in china and don't hold up. Their low-end models are priced with Broil King's top-end.
   
4. Lion
1. This was my favorite for the cost/value. They only make two models and the main difference is the size. Top quality construction. They are expensive at base cost but you get a nice set of extras that come with it. 

I looked all over for pricing and Amazon was very competitive with these models. Pricing includes shipping.
 Lion:

This is the one I would recommend, it has the rotisserie burner and comes with a bunch of extras like the rotisserie, smoke box and there is also the ability to add a searing burner.

Napoleon:

There are several models in this price range from them but I liked this one the best for feature to price ratio. This model is still very nice and well constructed but not to the same level as the Lion. This one includes the rotisserie and has a searing station.

Broil King Imperial:





This one is the same brand as you will see at home depot but it's the high-end model. Anything from the imperial line is supposed to made of more solid materials and better construction. I don't think it's going to be at the same level as the above models but I'm sure it's good and it's priced significantly lower. It comes with the rotisserie but no searing station and as far as I can tell you can't add one.