Is there anything as primal feeling as eating ribs?  I mean, you have to be really going at a carcass to rip apart a rib cage in the pursuit of some good eats.  I am personally incredibly thankful for the carnivorous pioneers who discovered the meat fiesta going on along a pig’s rib cage and for passing that wisdom along for future generations to enjoy.  Humanity at its finest.

For this cook I am smoking a couple racks of back ribs, more commonly referred to as baby backs.  If you aren’t familiar with the differences in cuts of pork this is a great article to help get some learnin’.  Around my area the biggest thing to know is the difference between back ribs and spare ribs since it’s what the stores carry.  The main difference is pretty much that back ribs are a bit smaller and more tender than spare ribs.  I’m normally a spare ribs guy, but the market only had backs this time so here we are.

The first thing I do is a bit of trimming.  You can see some fatty stuff, particularly on the bottom right of the rack on the bottom of the pic above, that I’ll trim off.  Also, if there is a skirt of meat on the bone side I like to trim that off.  Also, check along the edges of the racks to see if there are any small bone fragments, and if so clean those off.  The last thing I do for clean up is to pull the membrane off of the bone side of each rack.  The best method I’ve used is to take a butter knife to get under the membrane to start.  I’ll caution you though, there are a couple layers (not sure if the bottom layer is also membrane, I don’t science) and you only want the top layer to come off so you don’t expose all of the bones.  Once you’ve started the separation with the butter knife your best bet is to grip the membrane with a paper towel (it’s slipper otherwise) and hopefully pull it all off in one yank.

Below is a comparison shot between a rack that still has the membrane (top) and the one it’s been pulled from (bottom).

Once you are done trimming and pulling membranes you are ready to rub.  Similar to the pork butt I coat the ribs in a bit of olive oil first so the rub will stick nicely, then I go to town with the dry rub.  Again, pork is not a very flavorful meat on its own, so don’t be shy with the rub here.

For this cook I prepped and rubbed the ribs a few hours before putting them in the barrel with the idea I’d do a bit of a dry brine.  The rub I used has a good amount of salt which after some time brining should increase moisture and tenderness in the finished product.  If you’d like some info on dry brining you can read up on it here.  I just kept them on the tray and wrapped the whole thing.

Once it’s time to cook, and the barrel is going, I hang the racks and sit back for a couple hours.  After about two hours I’ll go and take a look to see how the bark is forming, and also see if the meat has started to pull back a bit to reveal the bones.  This is how I determine how close ribs are to being ready as opposed to monitoring internal temps.  At this point I’m looking for a nice mahogany crust and a bit of bone showing.

This step is optional depending on how you like your ribs, but I pull the ribs at this point for some sauce.  I like to sauce them during the cook so it thickens and caramelizes the sugar a bit, and I don’t add sauce when eating them.  Also, if your sauce has been in the refrigerator let it sit out for a while before this to bring it up to room temp.  No reason to add cold sauce onto hot ribs you have cooking.

After about another 30 minutes the ribs should be ready.  Again, take a look to see if the rib bones are showing – I look for about ¼” of bone showing to consider them ready.  After you pull them let them rest for about 20-30 minutes before cutting them.  I suck at cutting ribs so I usually flip them so the bone side is up, but if you aren’t terrible at life you can cut them like a man (or woman for our lady readers out there).  If all went well you should have some tasty ribs!

Lilly approves!

When Paul isn’t busy BBQ’ing, he can be found lifting the train wheels at IronSport with himself, while he & himself also looks on, or helping his wife with her new food blog project. 

OG commenter Sousa is back with some more smoked meats for your enjoyment, this time serving up some pork butt. 

Since nobody threw rocks at me after my last post I figured I’d go for another one, this time focusing on some pork butt (which confusingly is actually from the shoulder – stuff like this is why I failed biology).  I’ll be shredding it in the end for some pulled pork which is a great option for a get together, or just a week’s worth of lunches.

One thing I’ve come to learn in regards to pork is that it isn’t graded like beef so you have to look at the meat itself to determine the quality.  Luckily there is a handy guide available to help assist you with this.  Another difference between pork and beef is that pork is typically much cheaper than most cuts of quality beef.  I grabbed this 11 pound butt on sale for about 23 doll hairs which is a pretty solid value.

One nice thing about smoking a butt is that it’s a really easy prep.  All I do to get it ready is pat it dry with some paper towels, give it a light coating of olive oil, and then get reckless with some rub.  You might also get interrupted by a Santa footed child asking for chocolate milk.  He is not amused.

Pork isn’t an overly flavorful piece of meat so feel free to go crazy with the rub, the only thing I’d caution is to not overdo it with salt (unless that’s your thing – you do you then).  Once you’ve rubbed the butt (giggle) it should look something like this.

You are now ready to toss it on the smoker!

In my last post I went over the smoker I use and some basics on getting it going so I’m not going to bore you all again with that.  I’ll just add that for this cook I tried a different brand of briquette, and I added a chunk of hickory to the coals.

Given the size of this butt I opted to just use the grate for the whole cook and not risk having it fall off the hooks.  I got my thermometer set up, put the meat on the grate, and inserted the internal temp probe.

I then inserted the rebar rods (those actually play a role in temp control), and covered the barrel.  The good thing about smoking, especially in a cooker that holds temp pretty well, is you can then ignore it for a while.  But even with that it’s still fun to take a peek at how things are going.  Four hours in I was curious so I popped the cover off and was happy to see a nice bark forming.

Pork butt is one of those meats where you should take some steps at specific internal temps, and the first step comes somewhere in the 160-170 degree (Faranheit) range.  For this cook I waited for about 165 degrees.  I set up a couple pieces of heavy duty aluminum foil, and also about a half cup of apple juice (you can use beer, pineapple juice, etc. as well).

I transferred the butt CAREFULLY over to the foil.  It should already be fairly tender, and it is hot, so your best bet is some good gloves so you can really hold it securely while moving it.  You don’t want it to fall apart on you here.

I poured the juice around the butt and wrapped it nice and tight in the foil, then back on the grate it went (with the internal temp probe back in).  I also added some peaches, tomatoes, and peppers as my wife is trying to put together a smoked peach salsa recipe which I am happy to be taste testing for her.

From here it’s another 2-3 hours of just letting the smoker do its thing until the internal temp hits around 195 degrees.  At that point you can take the wrapped butt out of the smoker and bring it inside.  Once unwrapped it should have a beautiful bark and be sitting in a pool of drippings.  As tempted as you may be, do not start drinking the drippings.

Your butt should have some good jiggle to it.

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Let it sit for a bit, maybe 15-20 minutes, then move it to a cutting board and the shredding can start.  I don’t have any great tips for shredding, I tend to do a lot of it with my hands as I like to remove big pieces of fat and the occasional pieces of bone and find the tactile advantage to help with this.  I do take off the whole fat cap and toss it, but if you like big bits of fat in your pulled pork feel free to keep it in the mix.  The only other suggestion I’ll make if you are serving it to a group of people is to NOT add any sauce to it, instead offer a variety of sauces that they can choose from.  When you are all done you should have a big pile of beautiful pulled pork which you can then drizzle the drippings you didn’t drink (you didn’t, right?) over.  I dream of a silo filled with pulled pork that I could swim in Scrooge McDuck style, but I’d probably get horribly burned and die.

So a quick shameless plug – one other thing you could do to give another option on a pulled pork sandwich is to whip up some slaw while the butt is smoking.  My wife did this during this cook, and she posted a real easy recipe on her blog over here.  I’m not a slaw guy myself, but the combo was surprisingly good.

 When Paul isn’t busy BBQ’ing, he can be found lifting the train wheels at IronSport with himself, while he & himself also looks on, or helping his wife with her new food blog project.