Pork Baby back ribs (dry rub Memphis style)

Today we are doing pork ribs in the dry rub/Memphis style. Traditionally this uses St.-Louis cut spare ribs but since these seem to be rarer than hen’s teeth (which don’t make good barbecue…) in these parts, we are attempting it with the smaller baby back ribs instead. Read on to see how they turned out.

Baby Back Ribs on the smoker

• Setup: Weber Kettle, with Smokenator. Setup for indirect 2-zone cooking with a Weber water pan on the bottom grate.
  

  The baby back ribs as they came packaged from Whole Foods. (Hand model’s own…)

• Meat: Pork baby back ribs. These came from Whole Foods and were something of a last resort as I had struck out at four other places for St. Louis cut spare ribs and the original uncooked and untrimmed weight was about 1.7lb.
• Fuel: Kingsford Blue Bag briquettes with hickory wood chunks.
• Prep:
  1. Since the ribs hadn’t been wrapped long there wasn’t much to do other than give them a quick rinse and trim off a few a stray bits of fat. The membrane from the back side was removed by wiggling a table knife under the membrane on top of the left-most rib bone and levering it up. It could then be grabbed with a piece of paper towel and pulled off. (Since the membrane had already been scored down the middle, it came off in two pieces rather than one large one.)
  2. Put the ribs into a large foil tray (ribs don’t fit in standard Weber foil trays as I have found to my cost before…). Dry-brined with kosher salt all over and put it in the refrigerator for an hour or two to allow the salt to penetrate.
  3. The dry rub was made up according to the recipe below with a 1/3 cup (approx. 80 ml) reserved for later.
  4. Rubbed all over with a little bit of olive oil to allow the rub to adhere better and then sprinkled with dry rub, patting to try and persuade it to stick properly.
• Dry rub recipe:

Baby back ribs (meat side down, bone side up) after trimming but before removal of the waxy-looking membrane. (The score down the middle of the membrane was done by the butcher, not me).

Ribs (meat side down again) after removal of the membrane and sprinkling with kosher salt.

The baby back ribs meat side up in their foil tray after dry brining.

Baby back ribs after coating with slather and covering with the dry rub.

Cooking Diary

• 12:30pm: Prepared and dry brined the baby back ribs. This consisted of trimming off the straggly  small bits of fat left on, pulling off the membrane from the back side of the ribs and sprinkling all over with kosher salt. These then went into one of my new large foil pans (recovered from work where they came with a stack of burritos in them and which I though would be just right for ribs…) and into the refrigerator.
• 1:45pm: Filled Smokenator with briquettes, transferred 12 briquettes onto some scrunched-up Pam-sprayed newspaper inside the Weber chiney and lit it with the aid of 2 Weber starter cubes.
• 2:05pm: Transferred lit coals into pit. Filled water pan with hot water from the kettle, replaced top grate and added grate temperature probe from the Maverick.
• 2:35pm: Put ribs onto the cooker.
• 2:40pm: Added a chunk of hickory wood.
• 3:13pm: Added another chunk of hickory wood.
• 4:30pm: Added another small chunk of hickory wood.
• 5:45pm: Raked coals and ash, added 6 more briquettes.
• 6:15pm: Passed bend/bounce test and have a good color – time for them to come off !
• 6:20pm: Put them in the vinegar wash (1 cup white vinegar and 1 cup water in a shallow tray) and then onto a chopping board. Dusted both sides with the reserved dry rub – ate !

Results

The baby back pork ribs on the smoker shortly before they were pulled off.

Smoked ribs after cooking and the dip in the vinegar wash and after applying the reserved dry rub. Some of the bark unfortunately got removed where I picked it up in the gloves and it twisted a little after being softened in the vinegar wash.

As usual with ribs, it was difficult to know when they were done and they may have gone a little over. It was a hot day in Southern California (mid 80’s F) with quite a strong gusty wind for the last few hours of the cook which made keeping the temperatures stable that much more difficult. The bark was a good dark brown color, perhaps a little darker and firmer than I would have preferred – it could also be I didn’t leave it the vinegar wash (much more of a very shallow puddle) long enough to soften it. The coating with the reserved “raw” dry rub was interesting giving both a different somewhat grainy texture to the finish with a lot of sweet heat. It was not as sweet as I feared it could be given the amount of sugar that went into the rub and the general sweet tastes of (most) bbq here. I definitely enjoyed it, but again find myself lacking comparisons to measure it against – all the ribs I’ve had previously have been “standard” wet-rib preparations with barbecue sauce added towards the end of the cook. Maybe it’s not too late too see if there are any plane and event tickets left for the Memphis in May barbecue contest and I can go see how everyone else does it…