Day 1 with my new Egg was pretty simple. Get the Egg to 300° for the A.B.T.s. Then up to 400° for the corn and then to 550° for the steaks and asparagus. My friend showed me how to zero in on the temperature I needed for each dish. Planning a menu that only required increasing the heat made it easy.
Yesterday I tried a little lower and slower. 5 Spice Asian baby back ribs with vegetable stir fry and rice. These cooked at 300° for 3 hours.
They weren’t the best ribs I’ve ever made. I never made decent ribs on that P.O.S C.O.S I ditched for the Egg, but I was pretty good with ribs and my small water smoker.
While these weren’t the best I’d ever made, they were the best easy ribs I’ve ever made. Once I got the Egg stabilized at 300°, it just held that temperature like it had a mind of its own. When I opened the lid to baste the ribs, the temp would drop slightly. But it returned to 300° within minutes of closing the lid and it never varied more than a couple of degrees off 300°.
No checking the water pan. No removing the meat and pan to add more fuel. No fire smothering itself in ashes. Just easy.
Here are the ribs and mop, ready to go on the Egg. Safeway only had one rack of baby backs, so I halved the recipe. One rack was enough for dinner.
While the ribs were cooking, I started the stir fry. Napa Cabbage, carrots, red bell peppers, fresh ginger, garlic, zucchini, bean sprouts and scallions. The cooking sauce is a combination of lemon juice, orange juice, sesame seed oil and a couple of other things.
I topped it all off with fresh basil and cilantro from the garden.
The stir fry held a surprise I’ll write more about later.
After an hour or so, I pulled the ribs out of the rib rack and just laid them across the top of it. That made it a lot easier to mop them every half hour.
After three hours the ribs were nearly perfect. Tender, a little smokey, not quite falling off the bone, just a little “pull” instead.
Two for two. So far that Egg is batting 1000.
