Adventures in BBQ

Today we are trying a classic staple of barbecue which is found all over in one form or another; pork ribs. Although I have done pork ribs several times before in the pre-Adventures in BBQ days, these have all been baby back ribs. In best scientific tradition, I thought I would try the other popular cut of pork spare ribs, the so-called St. Louis cut. These are the side ribs of the pig but come from further down the ribs than the baby backs, which as the name suggests, come from up near the back(bone). It should come as no surprise that Meathead Goldwyn has much more detail on the different pork cuts over at his (very appropriately named) Amazing Ribs site. Read on for more details of the cook and to see how they turned out.

Rack of pork ribs cooking on the Weber kettle

• Setup: Weber Kettle, with Smokenator. Setup for indirect 2-zone cooking with a Weber water pan on the bottom grate.
• Meat: Organic Pork spare ribs, St. Louis cut. These came from Whole Foods Market and actually come from Canada (presumably they haven’t been fed maple syrup as part of their diet…). The original uncooked weight was about 2.3lb.
• Fuel: Kingsford Blue Bag briquettes with hickory wood chunks.
• Cook: Approximately 5-6 hours at 225F. (Ribs are too skinny to put a temperature probe in without it hitting bone so there is no target internal temperature, you have to rely on the “bounce test” and “feel”…)
• Prep:
  1. Washed the pork ribs to remove the liquid from the packaging and any stray bits of bone that may have been there and patted it dry. Trimmed off the chunks of fat on the bottom and then removed the tough membrane from the bottom. Trimmed off two of the shortest ribs and some of the loose meat around the edges that will burn up. Still working to master the Aaron Franklin “one clean hand, one dirty hand” technique – I think when you do 60+ racks of ribs a day rather than 1 every few months, it gets a whole easier…
  2. Sprinkled kosher salt all over and left to brine.
  3. Made up the dry rub recipe and sprinkled all over the ribs, trying hard to get an even coat. I remembered the slather halfway through so only the bottom (bone) side got a water slather before the rub (don’t think it made a big difference, rub seemed to stick pretty well anyway).
• Dry rub recipe:

The St. Louis cut rubs prior to trimming. The two shortest “ribettes” on the left hand side were trimmed off as were the flat clumps and the loose pieces of meat along the top edge  and then the membrane was pulled off.

Trimmed rack of ribs after brining and before being covered in rub (yes I need bigger foil trays…)

Bottom (bone) side of the rack of the ribs after sprinkling with the rub and patting in. (I needed to shuffle it around in the too-small tray a bit to get rub onto both ends)

Cooking Diary

• 10:15am: Got the ribs cleaned, trimmed of excess fat and removed the tough waxy membrane from the back of the ribs. I also trimmed off two of the very short runty ‘riblets’ from the end which would most likely burn up during the cook. Sprinkled all over with kosher salt and left to brine a little in the fridge.
• 11:25am: Lit 14 briquettes pulled out of the full Smokenator in the chimney over 2 Weber starter cubes.
• 11:35am: Made up the rub recipe.
• 11:40am: Transferred the lit briquettes and the almost burnt out remainders of the cubes into the Smokenator. Put lid on and opened all vents.
• 11:50am: Filled water pan. Note for future reference: this is much easier to do if I haven’t put the Maverick grate temperature probe in already as the wire snaking through the lid and the attachment makes moving the grate to get the bottom water pan in and filled much more difficult.
• 12:10pm: Ribs on !
• 12:40pm: Added another hickory wood chunk.
• 1:50pm: Stirred coals, added a few little bits of hickory wood (Almost at the end of that bag also, as well as the red oak bag).
• 3pm: Added some more briquettes (about 15).
  

  Ribs on the pit near the end of the cook (after the addition of the extra water pans)

• 3:30pm: Having quite a lot of trouble maintaining a stable temperature so added two small loaf tins of cold water near to the Smokenator.
• 5pm: Bounce test time ! Ribs are a good dark mahogany color and look and smell really good. Surface cracks when picked up with the tongs from the end.
• 5:10pm: Here there was a bit of complicated fiddling about as I needed to get the ribs painted with sauce and put back over the hot coals and The Other Half™ needed to get her salmon burger cooked. So I lit about a third of a chimney of extra briquettes, took of the small water pans, moved the ribs into a large foil tray, took the temperature probe out, took the top grill off, scooted the big water pan over, pulled the Smokenator out and finally dumped in the chimney of now-hot and ashed over coals. The salmon burger went on the hottest part of the grill over the coals, and the ribs, after being painted in Stubbs’ Original BBQ sauce, went back on near the edge of the coals to set the bbq sauce.
• 5:30pm: Eating time !

Results

The ribs were done in about 5 hours, towards the short end of the estimated 5-6 hours cook time for St. Louis cut ribs (This may well be to do with the fact that we were effectively cooking at about 240F rather than 225F as I really struggle to keep my Weber kettle down that low without having both dampers basically completely closed).

The color was a little darker than the classical mahogany color that you hear about or see on TV shows but this is likely due to the fact these weren’t spritzed at any point, neither were they foil wrapped (which cooks them quicker and prevents the surface from getting any darker).

Completed ribs after being painted in the barbecue sauce and put back onto the cooker until the sauce set.

Verdict on the Pork Ribs (St. Louis cut): B+

These pork ribs turned out very well I thought. The meat had a bit of a tug off the bone but didn’t need to be gnawed off. There is a definite sweetness in the rub (not surprising given the amounts of two different sugars that go into it) but it is not overpowering and is nicely balanced. As for the St. Louis cut versus baby back ribs, I couldn’t say I noticed a great deal of difference beyond the purely physical (St. Louis cut ribs are flatter and the overall shape is more rectangular than baby backs). I think for a true comparison, I would need to cook both (allowing for the fact baby backs take about 2 hours less) types at the same time in the same way – I think I would need the Weber rib holders to fit both in the kettle as the ribs are a tight fit as it is and a second rack would probably end up too close to the heat.