While reading Chef Scott’s account of cooking baby-back ribs for hundreds of students at Shepherd University – it got me to thinking. He had to prepare the ribs a day in advance to ensure he had everything ready to add to his menu. After smoking the ribs for more than 5 hours, he chilled the racks of baby back ribs and stored them overnight in the walk-in cooler of his commercial kitchen. The next day the line cooks re-heated them in an oven before service.

I remembered I had some baby-back ribs that a friend had cooked a month or so before and vacuum packed them with one of those home units. When he brought them by for dinner one night I already had steaks on the grill so he said “Freeze ‘em till you need ‘em.” and I did.

So now I wondered what it would be like to thaw them and re-heat? I rummaged around in my freezer until I found them and placed the vacuum sealed bag in my fridge for a day to let it thaw.

The next day I cut open the bag and inspected for any freezer burn, etc. It looked perfect.

I removed as much of the sauce as I could with a rubber spatula to re-heat in a pan on the side burner while I placed the ribs on my RED infrared grill pre-heated and set on the BBQ position of the control knob. First I placed them bone-side down to warm them from the bones outward.

When I tested the rib meat with my instant read thermometer and the temp was rising, I used tongs to flip them to the meat side to directly heat the meat.

Since they’d already been slow smoked and Q’d I only wanted to heat them. I s’pose I could have performed that task in my kitchen oven but it was more fun on the grill. And as I brushed the heated extra sauce on the ribs, it got a little grilling caramelization which added even more flavor.

Oh yeah – and I ate them standing up outside by the grill!

Do you have any experience with vacuum sealing meat that you’ve prepared on your grill or smoker? If you have some tips you’d like to pass along either post them below in the comment section or send me an email at CB@SIZZLEONTHEGRILL.COM to share with everyone.

Happy Grilling!