Smoked Beef Back Ribs

Everyone loves to talk about the dino bone, the dino ribs, the beef plate ribs.. and with good reason. It’s lesser known, not as content-clicky cousin is the beef back rib. And as always, I like to try a different cut every once and awhile (Just wait until you see what I picked up at the market last night).

Today is the beef back rib.

---

Recipe

---

The Prep Table

Treating these like any other rib product.. we’re going to look at the 225 degrees 3-2-1 method. For those new and learning.. that’s a 3 hour smoke, followed by 2 hours wrapped, and finished with an hour, unwrapped, on the grates. That’s the mindset going in.

However. Having cooked a lot of ribs on my RecTeq Bull, it’s never exactly 3-2-1. Really comes down to the cut. The only time I’m poking and prodding, especially ribs, is when we’re wrapped. Everything else we’re cooking to color. Pig rib – I like to test the bend. Having never done this particular cut, we’re going to give this a whirl.

Simple Meaty Bits Beef Rub for this and let it roll. I’m planning for a good 6 hours, if not longer. Flashing back to my The Beef Short Rib – them meat nuggets took 8 hours, so we’re not quite at a marathon-level cook, but definitely a 5-10K.

Also, for those of us who hate mustard – you don’t need to slather in mustard for a binder! You can lay your rub on there, give it a few minutes to set and repeat. I’ll never back down in my crusade against the yellow devil. Lastly, remove the membrane from the underside of the rib. 225 and lets roll.

---

The Process

We’re just letting it roll. Letting it grab as much smoke as it can and watching for that color change. If it starts to look like its drying out, we’re going to splash it with a little apple juice or apple cider vinegar.. some water, or a combination of all of ’em like I did. I did about 2 parts ACV to 1 part water, 1 part juice. I normally just throw it all in a mason jar, shake it up and do some splashing. I ain’t fancy.

This is looking mighty nice. You can see that color is ever present, and it got some good pull – so we’re going to wrap it up and let it roll for an hour or two – Until the internal is about 200 degrees. I wrap in butcher paper and aim my best with the probe.

When that probe hits 200, re-probe and find a temperature on the other side of the rack. Sometimes you probe too close to the bone and you’ll read too high. I ended up probing a couple different times through the paper, but we got it to 200.

You see how that meat really starts pulling away from the bone. Really contracts and concentrates that flavor. You can see I re-probed it and made sure we’re getting an accurate read. In addition to my RecTeq probe, I’m going to hit it with a Thermapen to ensure that temperature. We didn’t need to keep it on too much longer to get to 203, we’re just adding more of a heat without the paper barrier.

---

The Result

I’ll be honest with y’all, I really just cut the meat from the bones and ate it like an uncivilized human. I’m going to say the short rib was still my favorite so far – but you know I’ll get that plate rib cooked up and written for you next. This was a nice fatty cut that really popped – but we’re setting the bar high over here in year 3 of ForensicBBQ. Let’s keep working!

---

The Recipe