“I know my husband
really loves me because he takes me to have ribs. He says I’m the only girl he ever took out
who actually ate anything on her plate, as opposed to pushing it around.”
---Julia Barr
Now you would think that during National Barbeque Month
we would make an effort to review at least one barbeque place a week. That was the intention but life happens. However, since Memorial Day is the unofficial
start of the summer barbeque season I had to at least try to barbeque something.
Smart and Final cooperated by holding a Memorial Day weekend
sale on pork ribs for $1.99 a pound, tri-tip for $3.99 a pound , and rib eye,
for $4.99 a pound. As with all such
special sales there is a catch. You have
to buy a whole piece of any of these items…a whole side of ribs, a whole
tri-tip, or a whole rib eye. I found a
nice looking, meaty side of ribs that was only $24.00. I did better with the tri-tip finding very
good one that was only $10.00. All the
rib eye looked great, and I would have loved to slice one up into steaks,
however the smallest one was $103.00, not really a problem, but we had just
stocked up on our usual food items and adding the ribs and tri-tip we didn’t
have enough freezer space for all those steaks.
Since Thanksgiving I have become much more proficient with,
and appreciative of the Big Green Egg.
With some research, and a bit of practice, I am now able to easily get
it to hold the low temperatures required for slow smoking. The temperature control is much easier than
the Weber Kettle and requires much, much less fire tending. It now takes me about seven minutes to fire
it up it to the 230 degrees for smoking ribs.
As for the fire tending, I just put the Egg where I can see the
thermometer from my den window, set the timer on my iPhone for 15 minutes so I
can check the temperature (After turning the alarm sound way down. The timer alarm on my iPhone sounds as though
it was warning of a nuclear attack.), then sit down to watch tapes or
DVDs. (On Memorial Day we almost caught
up with season three of Game of Thrones.)
During the six hours that the ribs were in the Egg I only had to make
minor adjustments to the vents twice.
I had cut the side of ribs into four small racks, since
there is usually just the two of us for dinner, and froze three of them. I put a dry rub on the fourth on and put it
in the refrigerator. Now, I don’t claim
to be anything but an amateur grill master, but I do lay claim to a signature
rub. My rub is truffle salt (Yes, it
comes from Italy and really does have bits of truffle.), smoked Hungarian
paprika, and black pepper. I also use
truffle salt and pepper on steaks when I grill.
The truffles impart a flavor to the meat that really has to be
experienced. The rub went on four hours
before I fired up the Egg.
I use the 3-2-1 method to do the ribs.
Yes, I know the web page is entitled 2-2-1 Ribs. That’s for baby back ribs…read the web page. It explains how the process of setting up the
Egg and preparing the ribs for smoking in detail much better than I could in
this short post. His rub is quite good,
I just like mine better. The last hour, with the ribs on the grill, is
sometimes shorter than an hour since I check my meat with an instant read thermometer
as it gets close to being done. You want
it done, but not dry.
The meal was completed simply with corn on the cob and
some dinner rolls. The ribs were so
meaty that we had a couple of leftovers.
I rib for lunch each of the next two days and they were still great as
leftovers.
If you select good ribs and use this method you will get
ribs as good as any you can find at a barbeque restaurant. The difference is that you have to put the
time and effort into making them, which, when you want to really do something
special for yourself and others, is very satisfying.
It’s summer, Happy
Barbequing!
