Friday, January 28, 2011

Divisional Championship Ribs

I have only recently started grilling and doing barbecue, maybe about 6-8 months ago.  Probably my favorite thing to cook are spare ribs.  For whatever reason, I'm pretty dialed in on everything in the process.  Plus, it only takes about 4-6 hours to get them on the table, even at a low temperature.

The Sunday before last, in preparing to watch the Steelers take on the hated Ravens, I decided to make some ribs for dinner.  So I picked up a rack of spare ribs, and trimmed them up to a pseudo-St. Louis style:


I rubbed them with a homemade concoction -- heavy on the brown sugar, with a small amount of salt, some cracked black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, chili powder, and oregano mixed in -- and put the ribs on my Weber Smoky Mountain.


After about 4.5 hours at 250F (+/- about 15-20 degrees), I took them off the smoker and let them rest.


And here they are, plated, sprinkled with some more of my dry rub, and ready to eat.


In the short period I've been cooking, these were probably some of the better ribs I have made.  They were at the perfect level of tenderness, and had a good exterior texture and smoke ring.  While these can be a bit more labor intensive than, say, a pulled pork, I tend to like the resulting meal much better.