Asian in a Strange Land

Delicious ribs

We interrupt the D.C. travelogue for this breaking news story: barbecue pork ribs are delicious.  I repeat: barbecue pork ribs are delicious.

With the economy being what it is and since we had a couple slabs of pork ribs in the deep freeze, I decided it was as  good a time as any to barbecue some ribs.  We already had the meat so we didn’t have to spend money on that, and the results go a long way if you don’t pig out (heh) on the ribs.

Trimmed and ready to be seasoned

I started prep around 11 a.m., removing the fatty meat flap and membrane from the bone side, then trimming off the sternum and extra meat around it to make more-or-less uniformly rectangular slabs.  Obviously I need some practice slicing in a straight line.  I also need to remember to trim some of the fat off the top.

All the usable meat

The trimmed off sternum and extra meat is on the baking sheet in the back.  These aren’t barbecue competition cuts of meat, but don’t throw them away either, because there’s lots of good meat on there.  This is where the “rib tips” are from, and although the trimmed rib rack is the main goal the rib tips are good eating too.

Dry rub coating

Then I sprinkled a generous helping of dry rub mix onto the ribs, made up of salt, pepper, paprika, brown sugar, and a few other spices–the usual suspects, basically.  At this point it was ready to go in the smoker, which wasn’t ready to go just yet.

First batch of charcoal

The first batch of charcoal in the chimney starter was looking nice and grayed-over, ready to be dumped into the bottom of the smoker.

Unlit charcoal on top of lit 1st batch, all in bottom of smoker

Then I spread another chimney starter full of unlit charcoal on top of the lit batch.  Once the 2nd batch looked grayed-over like the first, I reassembled the smoker, stuck some chunks of mesquite in with the charcoal to add some smoke flavor, put the water pan in the middle to keep the ribs moist and to keep the temperature stable, closed the bottom air vents, waited for the temperature to get down to 300°F, then put the ribs in the smoker.  There are 2 cooking grates in the smoker, so I stuck the extra bits on the bottom grate and the rib racks on the top grate.

Smoking away

Putting the room-temperature meat in the smoker dropped the temperature even further, and once it got close to 250°F I reopened the bottom vents a little to try and keep the temperature range between 225 and 250°F.  This is the ideal temperature range for “low and slow” cooking of ribs.  Over the course of the 6 hour cooking process (yes, 6 hours!), I went out there every 15 minutes or so to see if the temperature was going up or down and adjusted the vents accordingly–open them up more if the temperature was getting too low or close them more if too high.  You can see the round face of the thermometer that I bought separately from Tel-Tru and stuck in one of the holes of the top vent.

This is where I plug the awesome Weber Smokey Mountain that I used to barbecue these ribs.  I am not in any way affiliated with Weber except as a satisfied customer (although if anybody from Weber stumbles upon this post I wouldn’t mind, ahem, testing and reporting on the 22.5″ smoker if you sent me one for free).  The Weber Smokey Mountain is affectionately dubbed the Weber “Bullet” by its fans, of which there are many.  There’s a whole website dedicated to using the Weber Bullet, complete with how-to guides for smoking various meats.  If you ever get one, the Virtual Weber Bullet site should be your first destination.

Denise bought me this for my birthday last year (thanks, Honey!), but I didn’t get to use it until earlier this year.  Before getting the Bullet, I had previously managed to smoke pork ribs in a Weber kettle grill, which you can see in the background in the photo above.  That worked ok, but the fire was too close to the meat, the temperature was hard to control, and there wasn’t enough room to put in enough charcoal for the whole cooking process so I had to refresh the charcoal every hour.  It was a huge hassle.  The delicious results made it worth doing a couple more times and I even did a few pork shoulders for pulled pork in there (same deal except 10-12 hours!), but the hassle really got to my lazy side.  The Bullet makes the whole process so much easier and better.

By the way, mine is the 18″ version that used to be the only version but has now been discontinued.  Current variants are the 18.5″ and 22.5″ diameter smokers.  I’m almost positive the only differences are the diameters, so by getting one that’s 0.5″ smaller in diameter than the current 18.5″ version we saved a lot of money over the newer version.  Those savings will of course go up in smoke (heh) when we get the 22.5″ version   Hey, the 18″ is feeling cramped!  I can barely fit 2 racks of ribs in there.  Need.  More.  Space.  Actually for ribs I hope to eventually get some rib rack stands so I can maybe fit 3 or 4 racks in there standing on their sides instead of laying flat.

After 5 hours

I opened the lid for the first time after 5 hours of cooking (taking off the lid too often releases all the heat and prolongs cooking time), and this is what the ribs looked like.  You can barely see the 2nd layer of rib meat on the lower grate underneath.  I did the “pull test”, tugging on some of the bones to see if they had gotten slightly loose, which they were.  I then applied some Jack Daniels barbecue sauce, put the lid back on, let them cook for another hour, and they were done.

The subjects of sauce vs. no sauce as well as homemade vs. store-bought can be the subjects of heated debate among avid barbecue enthusiasts.  For me, store-bought sauce is so cheap and tasty that it’s worth the time savings versus mixing my own, so that’s what I’ve gone with.  Maybe one day I’ll experiment with my own concoction, but I’m happy to defer that chore for now.

Finished product

This is what the final result looked like.  The nice glistening brown coat is the caked-on barbecue sauce.  It’s not overly saucy–just enough to coat.  Extra sauce on the side is available for those who want more.

Rib tips

This is what the chopped up bits near the sternum, a.k.a. “rib tips”, look like.  The white parts are cartilage, and as you can see there’s plenty of meat around them, although it varies from piece to piece.  That’s why I kept and cooked the sternum part.  This meat is just as good as the rib meat, and would be a huge waste if not used.

Leftovers

We ate most of 1 rack of ribs between the 3 of us, and this is what we had left over afterwards.  The top bag is ribs and the bottom is rib tips.  As of the time of this post we’ve eaten from these ribs 3 times, and Denise says we can get another full meal out of what’s left and still have a bit left over.  So 4 full meals x 2 adults = 8 meals.  Plus Sofia ate 1 rib per meal, so let’s say 1 meal total out of her 3 portions.  8 + 1 = 9 meals.  9 meals (including sides of course, mainly rice) for well under $20.  Very nice.

Incidentally, my mom also loves to tally up the cost of home made meals and compare to restaurant prices.  I’m turning into my mom!

One last glamor shot of the beautiful ribs

Smoking ribs is super cheap and super easy.  Time consuming, but easy.  A decent smoker isn’t a requirement (that Weber kettle grill did the job alright), but it makes life a lot easier.  The ease of use afforded by a smoker like the Weber Bullet will make you more likely to want to put forth the effort of smoking, and the more you smoke the more money you save over eating out.  You’ll make up the initial cost of buying the smoker in no time.  Plus it’s fun to smoke meat and the result is very rewarding.  If you’re a barbecue fan you owe it to yourself to try your hand at making your own, and if you already have then you already know the joys of enjoying delicious barbecue made by your own hands.

Additional note on September 3, 2009: turns out we got 10 servings out of this, not 9!  It gets a bit hairy to count up how much the sides and stuff cost, so let’s just scale back to counting up the cost of the ribs.  They were about $14 total, raw.  Let’s be very generous and say $4 for the seasoning, charcoal, and sauce.  $18 for 10 servings of ribs = $1.80 per serving.  And that’s with us eating a bit too many ribs the first time because we enjoyed it so much.  Simply awesome.