Kamado Joe - How to Prep and Cook Pork Ribs

hey guys I'm John Setzler welcome back to the Komodo Joe Cooking Channel today we're going to continue on our back to basics series and I'm going to show you everything you need to know about how to cook pork spareribs so let's get started okay to get started on our ribs cook I'm going to fire up the big job I've got one Kamado Joe fire starter cube down here and a hole in the middle of my charcoal so I'm going to light that up and we're going to let this burn here with the lid open for about ten minutes after we get our fire going I'm going to place about four chunks of the comodo Joe cherry around this fire to get us a little smoke going for this cook and then we're going to place both halves of the heat deflector on the bottom level of the divide-and-conquer flexible cooking system and then we'll place each half of the grill grates top and today we're going to set up the cook around 250 degrees in order to set up for some low and slow cooking at about 250 I'm going to open my bottom vent to about one inch and I'm going to close the slider all the way on the top vent and I'm going to close the Daisy wheel to about halfway and we're going to let the temperature slowly come up to around 250 degrees if I need to increase the temperature I'm going to open this vent or if I need to decrease it I'm going to close it down so we'll just let it come up slowly from here the star of our show today is this rack this is a full rack of pork spareribs I've got two of these we're going to cook two today but the first thing I want to show you is what to look for when you get a rack of ribs you want that rack of ribs to Bend like this you want it to be fairly flexible when you pick it up if that rack is stiff you're going to want to avoid it you can take the these come wrapped in the cryovac packaging and you can pick the packaging up and usually there if there's more than one rack in there it's going to be a little stiffer than that but you can tell that that rack is going to bend you want it to be flexible and when you open the package it should not have any odor if it has any kind of bad odor when you open the package you take those back and exchange them for some that don't I've come across some occasional ones that smell bad so you're going to want to avoid that so the next thing we need to do is prep this rack of ribs and I want to show you the first thing we do on the back side on the bone side you'll see this flap that we want to cut off you just want to take a sharp knife and cut that guy all the way off do not throw this meat away you can you can actually throw this on the grill while you cook the ribs or you can save it and use it as ground pork the next thing we want to have a look at on this rack of ribs is what's called the silver skin it's a layer thin membrane that covers the backside of the bone here on these ribs you've got two options with this you can leave this on if you like but the the die-hard barbecue enthusiasts are going to recommend that you take this off which you can do you what you're going to want to do is take that sharp knife and get it slipped up under that silver skin and get it started from one end just get it where you can start pulling it up every now and then you'll get lucky and this will come off very easily but what you have to do is just get under the edge of it and then you're going to grab it with a paper towel I'm going to get a firm grip on it with that paper towel and hold the bone and you're just going to peel this off mine's not going to come off in one piece so I'm going to have to do it in two pieces but most of its coming off here and that's usually it comes off fairly easily so I'll go back get that last piece and we're going to have just a small little bit left over there that I'm going to get loose and then we're ready to flip this back over we're going to trim off what is called the rib tips we're going to do what's called a st. louis-style cut here and if you look at the green on this side of ribs you're going to see this line running right down through here and we're going to cut that off I'm going to start at the thin end and we're just going to run our knife right down that length and cut that all the way through just like that this is another piece of meat that you don't want to throw away what I like to do is I like to throw this on the grill while I'm cooking my ribs but once again you can put this with that skirt that we cut off and you can turn this into ground pork but it's really good meat and today I'm going to throw this one on the grill and I'll show you what we'll do with that but the next thing we need to do is clean up the end and get a nice squared off cut here so we're going to come right along here by this last rib bone and trim that guy off square at the end and now what we have is a nice square or rectangular rib cut this is called the st. louis-style cut and this is how I prefer to prepare my ribs it makes them look nicer and it's just a presentation like I said you don't have to do any of this trimming you can leave all that meat on there and throw that whole rack of ribs on the grill just like that so pick your method and I'm going to get the second rack prepared just like this and we'll be right back the next step in this process is to add the rad rub to your ribs you can add your favorite barbecue rub and you're just going to take a liberal coat and what I like to do is put enough rub on there where it completely covers the meat where you can't see the meat green through the rub so we're going to coat the backside I've got the bone side up on these we're going to coat it first and then I'm just going to Pat that on as you notice I'm not using any binder no mustard no oil we'll let this adhere naturally and I'm going to let that sit there for about 10 minutes before I flip these over to do the other side okay after your ribs have been sitting there for a few minutes you'll see how they get a wet look and that rub is going to adhere just fine to that so you just flip these guys over and then we're going to coat the back the top side the meat side the same way we did before or and we're going to let those sit there just like that until our grill comes up to temperature all right guys Big Joe is up to temp we're cruising along right between 225 and 250 so look at that smoke I'm going to open the grill up we're going to lay these beautiful racks of ribs right on the Joe one right there another one right beside it I'm going to leave just a little air gap between the two and then I'm going to take that one of those rib tip pieces that we cut off and I'm going to lay it right up here on the front side of the grill we're going to let that cook along with these this will get ready before the ribs will and it's what we like to call pitmasters treat so we'll be back to have a look at that we're going to close this grill up and we're going to let these go for about two hours before we even open the grill again so I'll see you then we've been going for right out about two hours now here so I'm going to pop the lid oh we're going to have a look these are coming along nicely I can see some areas here where the meats starting to pull back from the bone a little bit which is a sign that our cooks going well the ribs are still nice and damp across the top so we're going to let these go a little bit longer it start I'm seeing it starting to dry out a little bit here which means that our bark is starting to form so I'm going to let this go for about another 30 minutes with the lid closed and then I'll come back and we're I'll show you what we're going to do next all right we've been going to hours and 45 minutes or so now and that's a good indication there of how well this grill holds the moisture when I open the dome lid my lens fogs up my glasses fog up and everything else so as you can see here the top of my ribs are starting to dry out just a little bit and that's indicating that our bark is forming so that's a good thing that's exactly what we want to do so what I'm going to do now is just spritz the top of these with apple juice you can spritz with water you can spritz with beer just any kind of liquid you like just get them keep them nice and damp and do that once every 20 minutes or so for the next hour so I'm going to close this back up and I'm going to hit it again in 20 minutes hit it again 20 minutes later and at the hour mark I'm going to hit it again and that's when we'll come back to have a look alrighty we're about three and a half hours into this cook and these ribs are looking phenomenal I've been spritzing these like I said on 20 minute intervals for the last hour and I think that's about all the spritzing I'm going to do you can see here how the meats pulling back from the bones even further I've actually already cut into my rib tips and been tasting them they need to go just a little bit longer so like I said we're three and a half hours in I'm probably going to close the lid and let these go for another 45 minutes to an hour before I come back and we're going to mix up a little barbecue sauce glaze to base the top of these with after they've cooked for about another hour so what I was talking about earlier with the bend test is to to tell when your ribs are ready you should be able to pick them up with a Tong in the middle and they should bend over almost double and these are not quite there yet I don't know how you can see that's bending but it's not bending over double enough yet so it's not these aren't as tender as they're going to get so we're going to let those keep cooking and we'll be back in about another hour to look at these and go to the next step okay we've been going for about five hours here just about and these ribs are getting closer to being ready we're going to pick these up and do the bend test again like I showed you before and see see those are bending over nicely now they're getting close they're not quite there yet we're going to let them go a little longer but during this last hour or so of this cook I'm going to base these with some barbecue sauce and what I've done I have thin the barbecue sauce out with some apple sauce I mean sorry some apple juice you can do any kind of little glaze you like you can use straight barbecue sauce or you can just not sauce them if you like this is totally preference I've just mixed up a little a barbecue sauce with a little apple juice to make a thinner glaze and I'm going to glaze the top of these and we'll let these finish cooking first I'm thinking maybe another 45 minutes maybe an hour maybe less we're going to come back and check on them in about 30 minutes okay these ribs are ready we've been going a five and a half hours and I'm ready to call this been tests good to go we pick these up by the middle and they bend over almost double it's kind of hard to see there but there's a nice flex they bend over without breaking apart now if your ribs cook far enough to where they do break apart or they start to tear when you do that that's okay they're just going to be super tender they're going to be more tender than the competition style brisk our competition style ribs which is kind of what we're doing here the other thing you can do to test these for doneness is use a toothpick you insert the toothpick into the meat and it should slide right in there like with very little to no resistance it's like a Boston but when it's ready it's called the probe test and this these ribs are just super tender all the way down these just go in with no resistance whatsoever so we're going to take these off the grill take them inside and cut into them and have a taste okay I've got these off and I'm going to cut a few of these ribs and we're going to have a look and they smell fantastic and let's have a glance at one of these look at that that looks gorgeous let's pull one of these off here and have a taste okay we're going to check this out we're going to have a big bite of this so hmm man that's delicious beautiful tender hmm now I want to show you what proper bite through texture on a competition style rib should look like let's have a closer look at this after I've taken a bite from it one of the things you look for in a properly cooked rib is the ability to take a bite out of it like that and the meat pulls away cleanly from the bone but it doesn't pull away from the bone anywhere other than where you've been it that in competition circles is how you determine whether the rib or how well the rib is cooked if the meat tears off of here completely what you end up with is a very beautifully tender rib and people call that fall off the bone and there's nothing wrong with fall off the bone ribs when you're serving that to your friends and family it's very good you can't go wrong with it but I know the people that watch these videos and the people that follow they're looking for competition standards a lot of times and these ribs come very close to meeting the competition standard when it comes to bite through texture which is what I've gone for here you could I could have let these ribs cook for another 30 minutes or so and we would have had fall off the bone consistency on those so what we have here is a good walkthrough on how to cook ribs I'm not focusing here on ingredients recipes or anything but hopefully this video will give you the information and knowledge you need on how to cook ribs how to prepare your ribs and most importantly how to know when these ribs are ready to come off the grill join us on facebook facebook.com slash Komodo Joe follow us on twitter at Kamat Ojo and until next time this is John Setzler with Comodo Joe Cooking Channel

Channel: Kamado Joe

Views: 404,129

Rating: 4.7514529 out of 5

Keywords: how to cook ribs, pork, spare ribs, saint louis, cut, style, competition, ribs, barbecue, smoked, grilled, babyback, baby back, kamado, charcoal, kamado joe, big green egg

Id: PFqzKyiCXIc

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2016