Firsts all around
Well this is my first blog, it also just so happens that this was also my first time cooking beef ribs. I have to say I am a super lucky man, I have a wonderful wife who understands that one of my stronger love languages is receiving gifts, thankfully hers is most certainly acts of service. This works out for both of us, particularly for this post.
It all starts as most food does with a trip to the grocery store. My wife loves to surprise me with foods that I love, and that she won't particularly enjoy. This trip she came back with beef ribs, root beer, chips and salsa, Dr. Pepper, and Cinnabon cereal. The path was immediately clear to me.
Being a BBQ junkie, I knew of cola based sauces and thought, well what about a root beer based sauce. One thing led to another and the following recipe came to be. The sauce is based off of a recipe I found in my Barbeque Bible that I bought a few months ago and am putting to use for the first time here, yep another first.
The Prep
First things first, I did an indoor smoking of my meat (my own crazy idea), which admittedly didn't work nearly like I wanted it to but more on that later. In order to do this I used mesquite wood chips which I soaked in diluted coffee for an hour while I made my sauce and prepped the ribs.
The Sauce
Ingredients:
1/2 cup root beer
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. sriracha
1 tsp. garlic powder
Fresh cracked black pepper to taste
I combined the ketchup and root beer in a liquid measuring cup, in that order, and stirred them together in the cup. This gets all the ketchup off the walls and bottom. Pour into a 1 qt. sauce pan, add the rest of the of the ingredients and whisk together. Slowly bring to a boil, I set it at low for a minute, then cranked to medium, then, finally, brought it up o the full boil stirring very frequently. Then I reduced the heat to medium and simmered it for 8 minutes, again stirring almost constantly. Move it to a bowl to let cool, we'll come back to it later.
The Ribs
They are Beef back ribs straight from the super market, nothing super fancy. The prep was the same as for any pork ribs, however, I did find it a bit more challenging. Start by removing the membrane on the underside, now for pork ribs once you get a hold of this you can just pull and it comes right off. Well for the beef ribs this is a bit tougher. Once I got it started I had to use my knife to gently score along the leading edge, separating the membrane from the meat trying not to cut into the meat underneath. This process, no joke took me a solid five minutes.
After I removed the membrane
After that fight was over, I moved on to the trimming of the fat, now I am a big believer in letting the meat speak for itself. In order to do that it needs flavor and we all know that fat carries the flavor, so in order to let this happen I tend to only trim away the fat that I know I can remove without taking any of the meat, or anything thicker than a 1/8 of an inch. After trimming away about 4 oz. of fat it was time for seasoning. Now I don't measure when I season meat I just go by instinct. One trick I do use is to hold the bottle about a foot above the meat this helps avoid those spots where too much spice accidentally comes out and one part of the meat is too salty or spicy. I used my regular seasoning for beef which is simply sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder, chile powder, and paprika. After you lay down the seasoning massage the spices into the meat, it sounds funny but I really think it helps the seasoning stay on the meat during cooking. Once seasoned, I let the ribs set for about twenty minutes just to absorb those flavors as much as possible.
The Cook
Alright now we are almost there. Set the oven to 275 degrees, let it pre-heat. Set the ribs on top of the burrito of wood chips, and wrap them tightly in the large sheet (two overlapping) that you have laid out. Set in the middle of a large cookie sheet and smake (smoke/bake) for 2 hours. Don't touch them just let them work their magic. After two hours take them out and smother them with about half to three quarters of the root beer barbeque sauce, wrap them back up and hit them for another hour cranking the oven to 350 degrees (I only did half an hour because we had somewhere to go this evening and they were still a bit tough). Take them out one last time and open the foil turning it into a boat of sorts, and add the rest of the sauce. Put that back in the oven uncovered for 10-15 minutes to get a nice solid sauce foundation on the top of the ribs. Let the ribs rest for 5-10 minutes and enjoy!
The Semi-smoke set-up
This whole time we've had those wood chips soaking, now it's time to get them ready for smoking. Strain the wood chips out from the liquid and set them aside. Prepare a piece of foil about 12-16 inches long, Lay out the wood chips in a line along the lower half of the foil,
fold in the sides, and roll it up like a burrito. I did this so that the smoke created wouldn't overwhelm the oven. It worked out too well. There were hints that the smoke had some effect (just a bit of pink here and there) but there was no real smoke ring or anything, for anyone that doesn't know a smoke ring shows as a dark pinkinsh-red ring under the crust of the meat, that is visible after cutting through the meat.
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| these are not mine, thank you live to cook at home |
After it was burritoed, I laid out two overlapping pieces of foil about 18 inches long and set the burrito in the middle.
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| boat with sauce added |
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| The Final Product |
The great part about these and added bonus is that the dog can enjoy the bones, and believe me my dog Luna loved them.
I hope you enjoy this, and I look forward to doing this more often. I'm sure as I continue they will get shorter and hopefully I can grow in my culinary experiences over time.
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