BBQ Ribs: Smoking Meat, Making Sausage, Making Cheese, Making Jerky, Brewing Beer, Canning, Dehydrating

Smoked Ribs

I’ve never met anyone who said they didn’t absolutely love ribs! I’m sure there’s someone out there but I’ve never met them! Tender juicy ribs better than you get at your favorite restaurant are really very simple once you know the secret. Here it is!

First off there’s several cut of ribs available.

Spareribs Spare ribs which are the whole untrimmed rack. This is my personal favorite. You buy they and smoke them whole or trim off the skirt meat to make them look the way you want. The skirt meat is thin so it cooks faster and gives you something to snack on during you long slow smoke!

TrimmedRibs

When you trim the ribs into Kansas City ribs or Baby Back ribs just draw an imaginary line across the ribs at the end of the bones and cut straight across.

RibsBack

Here’s what the back of the ribs look like. You need to trim off that little flap of diaphragm meat next. Just lift it up and cut it as close to the ribs as you can.

Membrane

This is the membrane on the back of the ribs. It needs to be removed.

MembranePull

Next grab the membrane (that thin piece of skin on the bone side), with a dry paper towel and rip it off. You might find one side works better than the other. I find if I start on the small rib end and tear it off toward the long rib end it comes off easier. This is absolutely necessary for tender juicy ribs.

Now your ready to smoke!

Rub down well with your favorite rub. Rubs are a personal thing. We all like something a bit different. Some like a sweet rub, some like it hot, and some like it salty. I don’t like mine real sweet or real salty but I like a little bite at the tip of my tongue. Here’s mine:

Deejays Rib Dry Rub

1 teaspoon of salt

6 tablespoons chili Powder

4 tablespoons Ruby Red Paprika

2 tablespoons cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons Ground Cumin

2 tablespoons ground Coriander

2 tablespoons garlic Salt

2 tablespoons onion powder

1 tablespoon black pepper

1 tablespoon white pepper

1 tablespoon basil

1 tablespoon turbinado sugar or brown sugar

3 tablespoons finely diced dried red bell pepper

Like I said rubs are based on personal taste so try my rub and add or subtract a bit of this and that until you get what is truly yours! I recommend experimenting with things like orange zest, tomato powder, crushed red pepper, Jalapeño pepper, chili peppers – have fun with it!

For more information about rubs download Deejay’s Book of Rubs from the Herbs and Spice Downloads page.

Now to smoke! I suggest you use the 3-2-1 method for smoking ribs at least the first few times - it works every time and it’s easy to adjust to suit your personal taste! Here it is in detail below:

The 3-2-1 Rib Smoking Method

The 3-2-1 smoked rib method is a good way to smoke ribs that fall off the bone every time. It works well with spare ribs or the baby back style ribs. 3-2-1 is a kind of shorthand reminder of how long to do what.

The 3 stands for the first 3 hours that you smoke the ribs at between 230° and 250 °F with nothing but your favorite rub and smoke.

The 2 stands for the next 2 hours. Remove the ribs, spray them with apple juice, wrap them in foil and put them back on the smoker for 2 more hours.

The 1 stands for the last hour. Remove the foil and put them back on the smoker for 1 more hour. During this hour you can add a glaze or BBQ sauce if you wish.

To tell if their done just grab the ribs in the middle with tong and they should be able to bend and touch both rib tips together.

That’s it you should have falling off the bones ribs at this point. If you prefer ribs with a little more bite and not so falling off the bone like I do, adjust the time spent in the wrap down to less than 2 hours and add that time to the beginning or end of the smoke or don’t wrap them at all. For your first few racks of ribs though do it this way and get a idea what you results are going to be then adjust accordingly.

My family loves ribs and during the week I don’t have time to smoke them. What I do is smoke several racks at a time but pull them at the end of step 2 and refrigerate or freeze them for later. Then all you have to do is thaw them out and pop them back on the smoker for a few hours and you’ll have delicious smoked BBQ ribs in the middle of the week!