LINYbob
New member
A week or two ago I cooked a rack of baby back ribs on my Traeger Junior using the 3-2-1 method with a 2 hr foil wrap. They turned out great! I use the Thermoworks Signal to monitor the cook.
See the attached graph.
Yesterday I decided to try baby backs again, but this time with Malcolm Reed's paper wrap method, cooking at 250f the whole time (seen on his YouTube channel).
The first part of the cook calls for the ribs to go for 2.5 hours, hitting 172f internal, then wrapping in paper and put back on the grill. This part went exactly that way. They looked great at this point, and were at 172f when I pulled them off. I spritzed a little bit of apple juice on them too before doing the paper wrap. Everything was exactly as on the Malcolm Reed video.
I don't know what went wrong, but after this step, the cook seemed to take forever. First, the internal temp of the ribs dropped from 172f to 158f, even though they were only off the grill to get wrapped for maybe 5 minutes. Malcolm Reed's mentioned his ribs dropped to 168f at this point, so I figured, whatever.
After getting back on the grill, the internal temp sloooowly rose. The pit temp stayed pretty much around 250f throughout. In the end, the ribs finally hit the target temp of 200f, but it took 6 hours after doing the paper wrap. I verified the temp with a second thermometer and they were at 200f. So to cook a small rack of ribs took total 8.5 hours. Crazy.
I thought maybe the butcher paper was insulated or something. There is nothing on the box that says it is insulated. I just looks like plain pink butcher paper. Maybe NASA could use it as a heat shield on the space shuttle, if they ever make another one.
I'm going to do an experiment and wrap a probe in this paper and put it in my kitchen oven at 250f along with an unwrapped probe. See if the paper is affecting the heat or something. I don't understand it. The ribs look great internally and tasted good, but I don't know why it took 6.5 hours for the temp to rise from 158f to 200f.
Malcolm Reed cooked his ribs for 1.5 hours after the wrap, then a rest for 45 minutes in a cooler. Mine went 6 hours, I skipped the 45 minute rest - I was hungry then!
Any thoughts? Is paper wrap that much slower than foil? What did I do wrong?
See the attached graph.
Yesterday I decided to try baby backs again, but this time with Malcolm Reed's paper wrap method, cooking at 250f the whole time (seen on his YouTube channel).
The first part of the cook calls for the ribs to go for 2.5 hours, hitting 172f internal, then wrapping in paper and put back on the grill. This part went exactly that way. They looked great at this point, and were at 172f when I pulled them off. I spritzed a little bit of apple juice on them too before doing the paper wrap. Everything was exactly as on the Malcolm Reed video.
I don't know what went wrong, but after this step, the cook seemed to take forever. First, the internal temp of the ribs dropped from 172f to 158f, even though they were only off the grill to get wrapped for maybe 5 minutes. Malcolm Reed's mentioned his ribs dropped to 168f at this point, so I figured, whatever.
After getting back on the grill, the internal temp sloooowly rose. The pit temp stayed pretty much around 250f throughout. In the end, the ribs finally hit the target temp of 200f, but it took 6 hours after doing the paper wrap. I verified the temp with a second thermometer and they were at 200f. So to cook a small rack of ribs took total 8.5 hours. Crazy.
I thought maybe the butcher paper was insulated or something. There is nothing on the box that says it is insulated. I just looks like plain pink butcher paper. Maybe NASA could use it as a heat shield on the space shuttle, if they ever make another one.
I'm going to do an experiment and wrap a probe in this paper and put it in my kitchen oven at 250f along with an unwrapped probe. See if the paper is affecting the heat or something. I don't understand it. The ribs look great internally and tasted good, but I don't know why it took 6.5 hours for the temp to rise from 158f to 200f.
Malcolm Reed cooked his ribs for 1.5 hours after the wrap, then a rest for 45 minutes in a cooler. Mine went 6 hours, I skipped the 45 minute rest - I was hungry then!
Any thoughts? Is paper wrap that much slower than foil? What did I do wrong?
