Smoke Ribs

Ribs are one of the finest foods known to man. They are kind of like vegetables, except that they are awesome, taste wonderful, and people like them. You can bake them, cook them in a crock pot, or if you really want something beautiful you can thrown them in the smoker and a few short hours later you are ready for a foodgasm. In fact this is the only real way to do ribs. I love ribs. What is to follow is a step by step explanation. This will be interesting to very few, but you should read it. It will help you be manly, and eat manly food.

Step 1. Prepare the ribs.
Ribs don't take too much work to get ready if you are buying them from the store. If you are buying a pig or catching a wild boar and cutting them out, well, it will take much more work. Chances are you will just buy them from the store as there aren't many wild boars here in the Cedar Valley.




Make sure that you pull of the membrane on the bone side of the ribs. That allows the maximum amount of smoky flavor to penetrate the meat. If you do it right, you can pull it off in one piece. Grab it with a paper towel or else it is almost impossible to keep a grip on it.



Step 2. Season the Ribs.
A rub, or seasoning blend, is applied to the ribs. Here is where you can use a "rub the meat" joke, but I obviously am above such potty humor (not true). The rub I use is from a recipe I bought from the operator of www.smoking-meat.com, Jeff Phillips. I would post it here, but like I said, Jeff sells it. I don't think you want to mess with a guy that knows that much about BBQ. That site, and the forum attached to it are amazing. It's like an encyclopedia of BBQ.



I also threw a few pounds of sausage on. Nothing fancy here, it's just one pound sausage rolls. They are delicious, and they are often referred to as "chubs". So before you throw them on the smoker, make sure you rub your sausage chub. (See) These chubs are awesome and should be made any time the smoker is lit. They take next to no time to get ready, and they are awesome for breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks.


Step 3. Start Smoking
I don't have a real fancy smoker, but it works well. It requires that I spent hours standing around outside near a fire with a beverage in hand. Yeah, it's that awesome. This unit is a Chargriller Outlaw. The fire is all in the offset side fire box, and all the meat goes in the bigger chamber. This way you are cooking with the indirect heat, and getting the smoky flavor. Low and slow is the motto for BBQ. The low temperatures and long smoke times allow the tougher cuts of meat found in BBQ to break down.

See the holes on the firebox below? That is the temperature control for the entire unit. Close it and it gets cooler, open it all the way and the temp goes up. It's pretty straight forward, but it takes a few tries to get the hang of it. You want to keep the temp right around 225-250. Keep adding charcoal and wood as needed. You want to have a thin blue smoke coming out of the top of the smoker rather than a white billow cloud. I use hickory and cherry wood.
By the way, the fire box gets so hot that it evaporates the paint right off. I usually paint it a couple times a year, and it still looks like that. By "looks like that" I obviously mean "looks awesome."


Here are the ribs after about 2 hours. The sausage was done at this point so I took them off the smoker and started eating them. They were delicious.

Step 4. Control that Temp.
I get a little bit "Mad Scientist" when it comes to BBQ. I have 3 thermometers I use.The first 2 on the left are stationary digital thermometers. I stick the probes into the thickest part of whatever I am cooking to make sure I get it cooked to the right temp. Make sure you don't get too hot. It will dry out the meat if you cook it too long, and after that many hours it really sucks.

The other thermometer, the black one, is a remote digital thermometer. The probe coming off of the base is stuck through a potato so that the probe stays about an inch off of the grates. This is important because you want to measure the air temp, not the temp of the grates which will likely be much higher than the air temp. The remote thermometer I have will transmit about 100 feet. That means I can sit on the deck, I can play bags in the yard, and I can sit in my recliner and watch football all while monitoring my temp in the smoker. God Bless the USA.


Step 5. Wrap your Meat
After about 1.5-2 hours I wrap the ribs in aluminum foil. This helps to steam the meat, which tenderizes it, and helps it fall off the bone.

Step 6. Unwrap your meat
After the ribs have been foiled for about another hour, take them out of the foil. You will notice that the rub has carmalized and is almost saucy now. You will also notice that the meat is starting to pull away from the bone on the bottom of the pic. This is a good thing, a glorious thing. This means they are almost done. I give them about 45 more minute on the grill with the foil unwrapped, and then take them off and let them rest wrapped in the foil for about 30 minutes. This resting period is important to get the best final product, and also infuriating because the whole house smells delicious and you are trying to not eat. Very tempting indeed. I tell my friends they have to rest an hour, so that way when I unwrap them 30-45 minutes later they get to feel like they won. I don't think any of them can read, otherwise I wouldn't admit that on here.

Yeah, I can't get this pic to rotate.

Step 7. Eat
There are no pictures of this step because I got really distracted and forgot.

So there you go. Invest a few hours in a couple racks of ribs and enjoy! Actually, make sure your dad is around, and then eat.