Blackened winter ribs

As this has probably been one of the warmest and most snow-free winters in decades here in Milwaukee, the opportunities for winter grilling have been many. However, the old chestnut of only missing something when it’s gone is very true. After three months of grill free activity (and relatively warm weather), Mrs Flamb suggested we might want some ribs last weekend – if you remember, the first weekend with snow on the ground for a long time.

We decided on the Chinatown ribs after Joe-be-wan sang their praises so highly, and so set them marinating over night. When the time for grilling came I must confess to buckling under pressure and rather than dig out my charcoal grill from the garage (I have yet to get the snow-plough attachment), just went for smoking on a gas grill with soaked woodchips in a foil packet. I was impressed at how well this worked, I didn’t see too much smoke, but certainly felt it in my eyes when I opened the lid to check on the ribs.

We set the grill at about 300-350, well I say this but to be honest I’m not really sure as I had to clean my thermometer of smoke stains to read the numbers, but ended up cleaning off the numbers too!! I may also have bent the needle because it seemed to get a bit stuck at times – anyway the grill was pretty hot, I know this because I burnt my hand at one point.

So the ribs went on bone side down for about an hour and then were flipped over for another hour. After the two hours they looked pretty good and just needed a little more finishing time, so to speed things up I lit both burners on low for about 20 minutes. Checking the ribs after this time I could be heard to utter such choice phrases as “Bugger” – I’d managed to completely burn the bone side. Luckily most of the meat isn’t on this side, so I kinda got away with it.

The upshot of this is that Mrs Flamb has now decided I need more winter grilling practice and so ribs are on the menu again this weekend.....everyone is obviously very disappointed, and are just hoping I can do better second time around...