I've been dying to do a rack of dino ribs since I got into this hobby. But they're just not available around here, unless you want to go to a specialty butcher and pay an absurd price. So I basically wrote it off as a "some day when the budget allows for it" sort of thing. But just like the rest of us, I always keep an eye one the flyers every week to see if there's anything work cooking in there. Well last week, I noticed they were putting short ribs on special for $6.49/lb. I went to the store and asked at the counter if they cut them there, or if they get them as racks. I was very pleasantly surprised to have him tell me they get them in racks! and he came out with a two pack in cryo and asked which one I wanted. Obviously the correct answer was "both."
So one got re-vacced and put in the freezer and the other was dinner last night. They came with most of the fat cap already trimmed off, so I kept out the one with the most fat and figured its the one I'll use.
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I went with a nice coating of SPOG, two parts SP and one part OG, and into a ziploc in the fridge for about 18 hours.
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Put it in the smoker a little before noon yesterday with a chimney of Kingsford and a some hickory splits. The drip pan has a can of Campbell's french onion soup and some water for a little extra moisture. I've found that I really need a pan of some kind of liquid in this thing. This smoker doesn't like to run evenly without it.
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Once the ribs started coming out of the stall around 4:30, I moved them into the oven to finish. I'm one of the believers that there's no reason to keep burning wood if there's not going to be much more smoke going into the food. At that point, its just an oven thats really expensive to run
I poured the soup and drippings, plus a few decent spoonfulls of tallow over the top of the ribs, covered it in foil, and put it into the oven.
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It took until about 6:30 for the ribs to probe tender, at 207IT. Seemed a little high to me, but when they came out, they had a really nice jiggle jiggle to them. I let them sit like this until the temp dropped down to under 190 and wrapped them in foil to let them rest. I started with a bit of a foil boat and poured all the soup and drippings in and then laid the rack meat side down to soak while it rested and kept cooling. The two younger kids put up a bit of a fight at bedtime, so dinner was delayed, but it probably worked in my favor. I ended up getting a two hour rest and was ready to slice just as they dropped to 140IT.
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This was easily the most exciting part of my day!
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Around 7:00, I was asked what we were doing for a side. I didn't think it was that important, but I got outvoted. So I grabbed a couple packets of Knorr broccoli and cheddar out of the cabinet and threw it on the stove. Earlier in the afternoon, I did a small batch of my Texas style sauce. The meat didn't need it all, but it was darn good drizzled over the pasta.
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