I know I promised another review but circumstances require I put that off and relate a cooking adventure.

You see, I like to play with my food.

I recently became aware of a kitchen toy, I mean tool, called a stovetop smoker.  My mind immediately turned to pork ribs, a category I have never been satisfied with making at home in a small New York City kitchen.  Now I have eaten great ribs – Cincinnati’s Montgomery Inn, Southwest Florida’s Rib City, and Ubon’s Barbeque in Yazoo City, Mississippi that I came across while taking a break from a motorcycle trip on the Natchez Trace.  All delicious.  Do not even mention NYC’s Dallas BBQ which has tough Baby Backs they are oh so proud off.  No thank you.

So I tried a little experiment, which went pretty well.  Picked up some meaty St. Louis style ribs at Costco, ran some through my sous vide device (haven’t reviewed yet because of mixed results, but this worked well) for about 3 hours at 167 degrees.  Tried my new stove top smoker (Cameron’s and will review after I have tried some more foods!) with hickory chips for about 45 minutes and finished them in a 450 degree oven after slathering them with barbecue sauce.  The result was delicious, falling off the bone, crispy on the outside, smoky flavor that was to die for.

I’m still going to play with other options, like a higher temp, longer water bath in the sous vide and making my own homemade Montgomery Inn Sauce.  But because the Costco rib portions were so huge I still have more servings to experiment with.  I call them Franken-Ribs because of the three cooking method approach.  A lot of work, but worth it and I’ll let you know once I perfect it!  More to come.

As always you can find more at http://www.walterthinnes.com and on Twitter @walterthinnes

TOMORROW: a review, I promise