Smoking Ribs
April 25, 2011
Go ahead – make the jokes. Yes, it’s hard to roll them and light them. No, Topps doesn’t make papers big enough. Go ahead – I’ll wait.
There. Got it out of your system? Good. Then let’s proceed to the serious business of smoking ribs.
First, what kind of ribs are you going to smoke? Pork, obviously, but that still leaves the choice of baby back ribs or spareribs. My usual choice is spareribs, because they’re much meatier, but you need 4 hours to smoke them, and I only have a couple of hours. Baby back ribs are good, and they do have the advantage of cooking faster, needing only two hours to smoke. I did find some gorgeous baby back ribs at Reynolda Farms Market, so that’s what I’m cooking today.
I always start with a dry spice rub the night before. The rub I use is a mixture of dried spices, from a recipe of Alton Brown’s. I made a batch of it three or four years ago, and I’m still trying to use it all up. I use this same spice rub for ribs and brisket, but since I only smoke things 3 or 4 times a year, it’s taking me a while to use it up. I take the ribs out of their packaging and put them in a large baking dish, then sprinkle the dry rub all over both sides and pat it in to the surface of the meat. Then I cover the baking dish with plastic wrap and let the ribs sit in the refrigerator overnight. I take them out of the refrigerator about an hour before I want to start cooking them so that they can come to room temperature before they go on the grill.
About 30 minutes before I want to start cooking, I put a bunch of hickory chips in a bowl of water to soak. They are going to provide the smoke. I use different types of wood for different meats. I like hickory for ribs and for pork shoulder. It’s the traditional barbecue wood for North Carolina barbecue. For smoked brisket, I use mesquite. And for smoked turkey breast, I like apple wood, which is a lighter tasting smoke, suitable for the lighter flavor of turkey. Hickey or mesquite are way too aggressive for turkey. Soaking the wood chips keeps them from burning and instead makes them produce lots and lots of smoke, which flavors the meat. The chips will eventually burn, once they dry out, but first they smoke, which is exactly what you want.
You can also get wood chunks, which are exactly what you’d think – big chunks of wood, rather than smaller chips – but I find that they never really get wet enough all the way through and you get more flame and less smoke from them, so I prefer chips.
Smoking is a little bit like braising in that you want to cook something at a low temperature over a long time to make it tender and succulent. The key to good smoking is temperature control. I smoke in a large charcoal grill, which is rectangular in shape and has a vent in the body at one end and a vented smokestack in the top at the other. I can control the temperature by opening and closing the vent and the smokestack. The less oxygen which reaches the coals, the lower the temperature. It also has a thermometer in the lid which tells me the temperature inside the grill. Using natural hardwood charcoal, I build a small fire in the side of the body closest to the vent. I place the ribs on the grates on the other side of the body of the grill, under the smokestack. I add soaked wood chips to the fire and close the lid. The movement of the heated air through the smokestack (that’s the Bernoulli effect for all you Vocal Ped people out there) pulls the heated air and the smoke across the ribs, slowly cooking and flavoring them.
Smoking in a grill like this means you have to constantly tend the fire. So I sit on the deck with a tasty beverage, communing with nature (Oh, look – there’s mama raccoon! And two flies just landed on my table, apparently engaging in an act that would get them arrested if they were humans and doing so in public.) and enjoying a lovely afternoon and keeping an eye on the fire. You want to avoid open flames, add charcoal often enough to keep the fire going but never letting it get too hot, and add wood chips frequently.
About half an hour before the ribs are done, I’ll start slathering them with barbecue sauce. I have a recipe for a nice tomato based sauce that I like, but I’ve been awfully busy the last few days (hello – it’s Easter Monday – I’ve been singing a lot), so I’m cheating and using doctored Kraft barbecue sauce, which is just fine. I’ll step up the heat a bit so that the sauce will glaze nicely. Once that’s done, I’ll take the ribs off the fire, and using a cleaver, cut them apart between the bones. Then, making sure there’s a good supply of wet kitchen towels, Terry and I and our guests will proceed to gnaw the bones clean, chasing the ribs with potato salad, baked beans, and rice and corn salad, followed by strawberry ice cream, made from the first local strawberries. Yum.
