We recently returned from a trip to the US. We had many, many culinary adventures on this trip through the American South- but this post will focus one particular discovery of the trip - BBQ ribs.I've never been a huge fan of ribs; they always seemed like more bone, fat, and gristle than meat. I've had great oven cooked ribs, but the ones off the grill never enticed me. On this trip we decided to investigate the world of BBQ ribs. We had our first rack at L.C.s in Kansas City and they were so good, I knew we were on to something.
Some other notable racks from our journey:
On the left - Memphis dry ribs at The Rendezvous. (The picture at the top of this post is an example of Memphis wet ribs, at B.B. King's.) The folks in Memphis are pretty proud of their ribs - these two places were suggested by the security guard at Graceland.
On the right - beef and pork rib combo at Leatha's, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I am still astounded at the huge hunk of meat attached to this rack. Where can you even buy ribs like this? These were absolutely delicious, but the sauce was really sweet. These rib leftovers made really good tin-foil dinner supper 6 hours later.
When we returned home, I thought I'd try making these for myself on our new smoker with an off-set wood box. I tried out the ribs two ways - one rack was kind of steamed in tinfoil in the oven at 250 degrees, and the other rack went into the smoker, maintained between 225 and 250 degrees. We used dry Manitoba Maple for the smoke.
This is what my smoked ribs looked like after about 4 hours. I took these ribs off the grill at about 4 1/2 hours. The ribs in the oven were falling off the bone after 3 1/2 hours.
The verdict?
The ribs from the smoker were too smoky and too tough, and the ribs from the oven were so soft they were almost mushy! The smoked ribs just needed more time and less smoke and the ribs in the oven definitely didn't need the tin-foil.
Food for thought for next time around. (And besides, Kansas City is only a 12 hour drive away if I want the real deal!)
2 comments:
try putting a pot of water in your barbecue to add steam to the mix. it will make your ribs motre tender. also, maybe a little lower on the temperature.
Thanks for the tip. I've also heard of people adding apple juice in a pan at the bottom of the smokere - I was actually going to do this, but I forgot!
By the way, MB maple is NOT the wood of choice for BBQ - we smoked a shoulder the following weekend with oak and it was so much better. The smoke from the maple was a little acrid.
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