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Finally got around to trying a theory of mine that frozen ribs are drier when cooked than fresh ribs. I bought two as near identical racks of baby back ribs from the same hog from my local butcher. I took them home put one rack in the freezer in a tightly sealed bag and froze for 24 hours. On satrurday evening I took the rack out of the freezer and defrosted overnight. This morning I removed the plura from the back of the both racks and seasoned using a basic rub, popped back in the fridge and left to marinate until 2pm. Fired up the WSM and cooked at 225 using the minion method and a clay saucer. I mopped both racks at hour intervals and then added a glaze during the last hour. Once cooked I chopped then up and plated them for my family to try and give the honest opionions, this was a blind test by the way. The non-frozen ribs came out on top with all 6 secret votes going their way, in this case a fairly clear win for my thoughts.

My theory on this is when you defrost meat you are left with liquid in the bag, this is water which has been released as the pores within the meat expanded during the freezing process. As water expands on freezing by approximately 9%, on defrosting the pores do not return to their original size and as a result of the water leaks out of the meat, resulting in a loss of moisture before you've even started cooking.

Going to repeat again in a few weeks using the water pan just incase that changes things at all. Anyone else had similar thoughts?

I suppose there are a lot of different things to try...foiling, cooking from frozen, low and slow vs high and fast, etc, etc.

I'm sure with some experimentation you could get the frozen ribs taking the blind taste test 50/50.

jotch wrote:I suppose there are a lot of different things to try...foiling, cooking from frozen, low and slow vs high and fast, etc, etc.

I'm sure with some experimentation you could get the frozen ribs taking the blind taste test 50/50.

That's my goal to understand which method gives the best result, I always have ribs in the freezer and will work on getting a sure fire method. It's just nice to know on a first pass my family confirm my thoughts.

I got a bunch of chopped up frozen ribs, so looking forward to any results that give fresh ribs a run for their money!