My usual method of cooking country pork ribs (the 12x2x2 chunks of boneless porky goodness.): Marinate in olive oil, lemon juice, ground cumin, garlic, pepper, kosher salt, and whatever else I happen to think of. Grill over charcoal. For July 4th I want to do something different.
What’s your best ‘secret recipe’ for a rub?
I’m thinking of putting natural chunk coals on one side of the grill, and cooking the meat on the other side with the cover on. Cooking times? Pointers?
1/2 cup paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt finely ground
2 tbls mustard powder
1/4 cup chili powder
1/4 cup ground cumin
2 tbls ground black pepper
1/4 cup granulated garlic
2 tlbs cayenne
I use a dry rub similar to above, but I add some dark brown sugar. I marinate in apple cider vinegar sweetened with sugar or mixed with apple juice. Some people like to marinate in beer. Place them in a pan or a foil boat and collect the drippings to make sauce. Don’t let them soak in the drippings, you’ll have to drain it a few times, but directly on a grate may result in drying out the meat.
Unless you’re cooking with charcoal or wood, then don’t use a pan, make a very small fire on one side, cover the grate with foil except for a hole on the opposite side just big enough to put the ribs with a little room between them, and cook them for a long time. Prop the lid open a little if you have need to keep the temperature down.
Light Brown sugar
Ground cayenne pepper
salt (easy on the salt… a little goes a long way with ribs)
dry mustard
garlic powder
onion powder
pepper
cumin
Rub the ribs and put in a big ziplock overnight.
Keep your smoke at 250 to 300 degrees and smoke it for 3 to 4 hours. If your fire is too hot the ribs will be tough. Sparingly baste with sauce the last 30 minutes, for a glaze kind of effect (optionally).
I ended up making a rub with equal parts chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, and brown sugar; half-parts Coleman’s dry mustard and kosher salt, 3 proportions of paprika, and 2/3 of a proportion of cayenne pepper. I put the ribs on a rack in a pan, opposite the coals.
I have the charcoal grill going. No way to accurately gauge the temperature, much less regulate it. I used an infrared sensor to see how hot the bottom of the pan is, and it was reading 276ºF. I closed the top vent and added some water to the pan, and I read 196ºF. I opened the top vent slightly.
I guess I’ll let them go for another hour or so (they’ve been on about 50 minutes now), and then finish them off with some BBQ sauce over direct heat.
Keep an instant read thermometer handy… I found out the hard way using a smoker set at 200 they can still easily get over done. For whatever reason I had been told it would take 3-4 hours and they probably would have been perfect around 1.5-2 hours. Unfortunately I didn’t check until 3.
Hm. It’s been less than an hour and a half, and the electronic thermometer says the meat is done. I’ll leave them cooking while the corn heats up, then do the sauce.
Quite good. Not enough room on the barbie for the corn; but they were buttered and wrapped in foil anyway, so what’s the difference if I cook them in the oven? I popped them in, then put the ribbage over the coals. Neither the SO nor I were impressed by the BBQ sauce from Dollar Store, but on the meat it was good enough – especially with the rub. I’ll use a different sauce next time.
But yeah… Nice and tender, the rub was good, and the sauce wasn’t bad. Bush’s baked beans are good. (No time to use silenius’s recipe, which I tried a couple/few years ago.) And I absolutely love corn on the cob. (Or off the cob, for that matter.)
First time cooking with indirect charcoal heat worked like a charm.
Get your minds out of the gutter! I think it’s a pork shoulder. Has a flat bone in it, anyway. I was going to make carnitas, but didn’t get round to a marinade; so I used some of the rub I made for the country ribs, and am attempting low-and-slow on the barbie again. I’m supporting it fat-side up with skewers. I still have to use the infrared thermometer to estimate the temperature, and I have a probe in the meat for later, which I can plug in to check for doneness.
I’ve tried to BBQ those before, but I don’t think they do as well low and slow. I do use two-zone cooking and wood chips on the gas grill, but it’s a medium to medium-high heat cook.
I pound them to uniform thickness, brine them about 1/2 hour, dry them, oil them lightly, spice them with my pork rub, and then grill them, basting with my BBQ sauce or duck sauce.
This was about three pounds, and was about four inches wide. It’s hard to regulate the temperature in the Weber, but I aimed for ~200ºF on the infrared thermometer aimed at the liquid in the pan. I let it cook for about four hours, then put some BBQ sauce (so sue me) on and let it go another half-hour. Then it went into the oven, since we weren’t ready to eat yet. SO boosted the oven to 220º, and it was in there a couple of hours.
Very tender when I finally cut off a couple of slices about 20 minutes ago. Put some BBQ sauce on, had some mac’n’cheese and some corn, and now I’m stuffed like a demon. Turned out fine for me, and the SO likes it too.
… left over to do the other half of the ribs I had in the freezer.
I just didn’t feel like dealing with the coals and the temperature uncertainty, so I put my rubbed pork into the oven. (I used the same pan and rack I used when I did the whole thing on the barbie.) I put a little water in the pan, and covered the ribs to let them warm at 195° for five hours or so. Then I started the coals and put the uncovered pan on the Barbie, as described above, for another hour. Finally, I brushed them with BBQ sauce and put them on the grill directly over the coals.
