And on the seventh day, God discovered something else ribs were good for...............

"And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it, and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh."
Daniel.......chapter 7, verse 5

Let's talk about ribs for a bit.

I use pork spare ribs. True, they have a lot of fat in them, but its the fat that makes meat tasty in and of itself. If you want "heart-healthy" you're only going to find a handful of entries here that you can use......sorry. You can pony up for baby-backs, or danish ribs, or country style ribs, or beef ribs. The principle of cooking is the same.

I am not a "rib snob". Fucking ribs are ribs people. In the ante-bellum south,they were one of the parts of the pig/cow that white people didn't want, like tripe.
When they discovered what the black folks were turning them into, they raised the price of them and made the black folks cook them up at the big house. I'm sorry if that offends my southern readers, but, hey, it's your history.

I buy my ribs at the whatever local store has them on sale. Ninety Nine cents a pound is about right, but mostly they sell for around two bucks a pound.

I buy them whole in the cryo-pack. This is a heavy duty hermitically sealed package that will allow you to buy the living shit out of ribs when they are on sale and stick them in the freezer for 6 months to a year without freezer burn or damage. (raw ribs only...........ribs that have been pre-cooked in the presence of "smoke" should be used in less than 6 months.........it's an enzyme thing)

I do not buy ribs that have been cut into serving portions and rewrapped. I can eat a half slab of ribs, the leftovers are good for about 5 or 6 days............and they freeze pretty well.

So, buy a slab for every two people you plan to have at your shindig, if they are all male. Buy a slab for every 3 people you plan to have if it is a couples thing. Buy a slab for every 4 people if you are entertaining all girls.

OK, let's get started.

Fire is fire, but we are not grilling these ribs (that is over direct flame) we are bar-be-queing them (in indirect heat).
I use a Weber Charcoal Kettle, they are plenty roomy, come with lots of nifty accessories and replacement parts, and are virtually indestructible. They cost around $70.00 new, but if you live in or near a medium sized city, you can probably find one in the want ads or at a garage sale for ten or fifteen bucks.

Here is a picture of my weber set up for indirect heat.......




I've used about 18 briquets to a side..........you will need to add 6 or 8 more briquets each hour or hour and a quarter. If you need to know how to light the briquets, read the directions on the starter fluid. If you are paranoid about the use of starter fluid, you can buy a device that allows you to light the coals without fluid. In fact, in the time (about 20 minutes) it takes the coals to be ready for cooking, the fluid you've used is burned away............and, dayum people........why sweat the small shit?........isn't life tough enough without finding new shit to worry about?

What I'm about to describe now is a very simple marinade. I just brush it on, rub in some salt and pepper and put the ribs on the grill. At this point, it would be helpful to have a small plastic wash tub and a big steel bowl. The bowl to work over (in) and the tub to carry the ribs out to the grill. Also, a "basting brush". Now you can buy a basting brush at a kitchen supply store for 2 or 3 bucks............or you can go to the paint department of a hardware store and buy a cheap bristle brush for 99 cents. You are not going to paint your living room with it.............it will last forever. Just be sure that you get a natural bristle brush. Don't bother with a "mop" unless you plan to cook about 15 slabs of ribs........it'll soak up about a cup of your liquid............but if you must have a mop, buy one of those cotton "glass washers"........same thing only smaller. It'll only absorb about 3 tablespoons of your liquid.

Let's take a moment to talk about kitchen safety (tip of the hat to Norm Abrams)..........when you are handling raw meat, wash your fucking hands....a lot. Wash off anything you touch (this includes the bottles and the salt and pepper shakers. Put the towel you wiped your hands on in the hamper and get a clean one. Wash the knives and cutting board ,and anything else that touched the meat, with hot, soapy water.................you do not want your lady friend dashing out of bed 6 hrs. later with a case of lower intestinal tract "discomfort"........know whut I mean, Verne? (talk about coitus interruptus!)..........nor do you want to sicken children or old people to the point of hospitalization. These things tend to get you talked about and not invited to pot luck suppers.

My marinade is half and half cider vinegar and worcestershire sauce. (one cup of each for four slabs.....extrapolate!) Now, you can use anything acidic.....lime or lemon juice, or beer or whatever. You can leave out the worcestershire and add apple juice or other fruit juices. Cruise the internet......use your imagination. My way will render a tasty rib that you can be proud of, but it's not locked in stone. There are literally hundreds of marinades and rubs and bastes and sauces............not to mention the ones that you will invent and add to the list. These are just the basics........feel free to tweak to your hearts content.

So,........


Brush on the marinate


Add a little salt.............


A little pepper..............


and rub it in...................

By this time your coals have developed a nice coat of white ash that tells you that they are ready........(and that all those nasty ol' hydrocarbons are burned away....fuckin' spare me)


The coals are ready...........

If you are only cooking one rib, you can just lay it on the grill. For two slabs, you can lean them against each other....(really!). You can buy a Weber Rib Rack, which will support, upright, up to 6 slabs of ribs. I've got a couple of them, but I was hung over and running late that morning, so I just grabbed a roast rack and turned it upside down..........worked great.(see what I mean about using your imagination?)

Mr. Meat.............meet Mr. Fire.......

Arrange the meat in your rack.

Put the lid on the kettle, and dampen the fire. Any cooker will have some way to adjust the amount of air going into the fire chamber, lower it way the fuck down......you want a slow fire. Ideally, the average temperature to which the ribs will be exposed will be between 180 and 220 degrees. (take note if you are going to use an oven) You will have the cover off about every 20 to 30 minutes during the 3 to 4 hours it takes to cook 4 slabs of ribs. (if you are only cooking one or two slabs the time goes down, but you have to mess with them more often and watch that they don't get too hot and overcook). On a Weber kettle, there are either three round devices on the bottom (and one on the lid) that adjust the air-flow or there is a lever that adjust all three at once (the Weber One-Touch.


Dampen the fire......

Now, you've got about a half hour before you have to mess with the kettle again, so relax and enjoy your party............





Take time to play with the munchkins

I do something to the ribs about every half hour or so. Each time I shuffle the meat around (inside slabs to the outside and outside slabs to the inside) so that they cook evenly. Here, I am brushing on another application of marinade. According to the Boze theory of marinade, the marinade serves to break down (or denature) the surface of the meat, and helps the volatile oils in the coals(whether it be hickory or mesquite or cherry or apple) to penetrate the flesh...........carrying the flavor into and through the meat as the principle seasoning. Too long a period of marination before cooking, and you'll wind up with meat that tastes like whatever acidic substance you used as a marinade. Sometimes this is a good thing.........sometimes it is necessary (like with Tartare or Ceviche) but I like seasoned meat flavors to come through. Good meat doesn't need a lot of help.


Marinade again and shuffle the meat........

I've brushed on two applications of marinate and the meat is starting to seal itself and render some of its' fat to the flames. The next step is to brush on some fat (baste). I have about a cup of the marinade left.........I'm going to put it into a sauce pan and throw in a stick of butter (real fucking butter, people, fat is good, so use a tasty fat) and melt it slowly. Don't let it boil or burn.


Add butter to marinade to create baste.......heat slowly

You've got about half an hour to kill, so...........


Have a beer............

Baste the ribs twice about one half hour apart, reshuffling the meat each time. Remember, if you are only doing one or two slabs, it won't take as long to cook, so shorten the times in between applications. Also remember to treat both sides of the slab.


Basting...........starting to look purty!

OK..............now we're going to make a glaze. Glazes are nothing more than sugar solutions. I use honey, blackstrap molasses and brown sugar. I add these things to what is left of the marinade/baste liquid and simmer it a bit to dissolve the sugars.


Making the glaze............

Glazing is also done twice..........one half hour after the last baste and one half hour between each application.


Glazing

Now we are going to make a finishing sauce. You can use whatever your pea-pickin' little heart desires. (If you like it spicy, here is where to add some pepper sauce). I once took a bunch of tomatoes, cut them into pieces and plopped them into a cast iron dutch oven. I cooked them down and ran them through a Foley food mill to remove the seeds and skin. I simmered the juice to the consistency of catsup and added the things I like in a bar-be-que sauce..........after all the freakin' work, what I made tasted just like K.C Masterpiece. Now, I do know that there are regional preferences............I won't even get into that debate, as there is some revisionist speculation that this is what really started the civil war.......and, further, that the real reason the South lost was because they couldn't agree on what constituted a proper bar-be-que dressing among themselves.
I am from the midwest and I eat beans in my chilli and prefer a sweet red sauce.......so there!

If you are a no sauce type, regionally speaking, you can skip the finishing...........just leave the ribs in untill they are done, shuffling the meat from time to time and basting or glazing some more.........(you may have to make a little more basting liquid).

I was under some time constraints to pull the ribs after 3 hrs. They were good, but another hour would've deepened the penetration of smoke seasoning and made the meat more tender.

OK...........making the finishing sauce. I emptied a bottle of K.C. Masterpiece into what was left of the marinade/baste/glaze, and heated it up being careful not to burn the sugars. How simple is that?

One half hour after the last glaze...............I brushed on the finishing sauce, reshuffled and opened the dampers to raise the temperature inside the kettle. You want the sugars in the sauce to carmelize (get gooey) on the meat. I put on another application about 20 minutes later and reshuffled the meat again..........
I took the ribs off about 30 minutes after that.



Ready for the sauce



Done

The warm marinade/baste/glaze/finishing sauce, is put in a nice bowl and put on the table as a table sauce. What is leftover after the meal, is put in an airtight tupperware-like container and stuck in the fridge. The next time you cook ribs (up to a year later.......really, the stuff has so much vinegar in it that it wont go bad) pour this into your marinade/baste/glaze compound to make the finish sauce. After a few years of this (every once in a while you have to dump in another bottle of K.C. Masterpiece (or whatever) this stuff gets kind of unique...........and no-one will be able to duplicate it. (I do something similiar with crock pot roasts........but that is another entry)

Now, the ribs are ready to carve...........


..........is that pretty or what?

I plan to discuss knives in another entry..........for now, it is sufficient to say that you should have at least an 8" chef's knife..... a sharp one. Don't be cheap when you buy knives.........but don't be a putz or a knife snob either. I use Chicago Cutlery knives. They are relatively inexpensive, easy to care for and keep sharp, look nice, and will last a life time. (I've had mine for over 20 years, have used the shit out of them, and don't plan on replacing them.........ever!) What's more, if you shop around, you can get real bargains on them as they go on sale a lot.

Back to carving.

In the last picture, the brisket bone is at the lower right of the slab. It runs lengthwise and slants up from left to right in the picture. This is the only lengthwise cut you will make. You can hack your way through this bone, but chances are you'll slip, cut something off, wind up in the emergency room and miss a great meal. You've come this far, don't fuck it up now.


Carving the brisket bone

Now carve in between the ribs in one, two, three and four bone pieces.



Carve into serving pieces...

It is nice to have a big ol' platter. I've got one at home, but I was at my Son's house and they just had small platters, so we put the carved pieces into one of those speckled roasters and set it in the middle of the table.


The feast is laid

If you click on the next pic, and use the little blow up dealie in the lower right corner, you can see how the smoke has penetrated the meat........(the redness)........in another hour it would have been even more pronounced.........


A meal fit for a gourmand

No demonstration of the sort I've practiced here would be complete without a picture like this..........

What its all about!!!

In closing, there are tons of books on barbecueing, grilling, and discussing sauces, rubs and the like...............so many that you can get lost in the welter. I found this one, some years ago. I believe its one of the better ones out there.

I hope you've enjoyed this, I hope you try this.........I look forward to seeing you again.

Thus endeth the lesson.............