cook some pork spare ribs make a rub

wrap em sauce em and then eat em

it's rib time

we're gonna start off by making a rub

for these pork spare ribs

one empty cup

this is what i'm going to use to mix

as usual

salt pepper of course is the base for anything awesome in my book

going to start off with

about that much black pepper

about half that amount of salt

my general ratio for

pepper to salt

for pork ribs is two parts black pepper to one part salt

they're really thin and their really easy to over salt that's kind of the

basic thing and this is what we do here at the restaurant

but salt and pepper is getting a little boring so we are going to throw some other stuff in there

a little bit of chili powder not too much

put a little bit of garlic powder if you do a onion powder or garlic powder you're going to want to do more of a granulated

kind of thing

if they're really powdery it's gonna settle and its going to clump kinda oddly i might

even take a little bit

so just sprinkle a little bit of that for some savory spices

and a little bit of onion powder not

too much

and for color not so much for flavor im going to add some paprika

paprika is pretty standard for rib rubs

it'll give kind of a nice red color to it

real simple kinda mix it up im only doing one rack of ribs so im not making much

rub here

but what i am going to do

im going to pour it in a shaker

get the rub on the ribs

really really even

unlike brisket and other things

where you can just kinda throw the rub on there

put it on the smoker

there's not as much smoke that goes on a rack of ribs

so i think it's a little more important to have a real even coat so you can see

just pepper it doesn't look kinda splotchy you dont want it too heavy on the

thin side you don't want it to light on the thick side and that's why i'm using a shaker

just to keep it kind of

lookin pretty

now we've got our

dry rib rub made

we're going to trim some ribs

so what you're looking for when you go the grocery store

is you're looking for pork spare ribs

not saint louis cut and not baby backs

baby backs come from a different part of the pig

little leaner meat and spare ribs typically have a lot more fat

they're going to be a lot more moist they're going to have a lot more flavor a full spare

has the breast bone attached right here

so we're going to cut that off here in a second

it's got anywhere between eleven to fourteen bones you can normally count on

twelve and it's not trimmed if you look around here it's just it's got the bones

and that it's got the cartilage and stuff in there

it's not trimmed it's got the skirt on it

and it's got kind of a tip right there what you're looking for

ideally is something that has a lot of fat

and you dont want it to look too lean but you want to be able to see some fat right there

that kind of go with the grain

that's going to be a lot of flavor it's going to

render more moist ribs hopefully it won't dry out quite as quick

if you'll notice here that this end is really thick if i was doing a competition

my competition ribs would come from right here because those are the thick ones and they

have the straightest bones but we're not doing competition we're going to eat this stuff

so we're going to cook the whole thing

and the knife i like to use is a ten inch actually its a nine and a half inch

just chefs knife

you're gonna be hacking through some bones and stuff so if you have a really nice

delicate knife that's kinda thin you probably don't want to use it you can use a

cleaver you could use a debba which is a japanese

butcher knife that shaped like a chef's knife

i use them

pretty often but they they get kinda heavy when you're doing sixty of these things

so i like to have a lightweight one with a thick blade lets get to trimming

first thing we're going to do is square this up

and there's kind of a baby little rib right there its

probably gonna fall out while we are cooking it and it's probably gonna burn up anyway

so im going to put my knuckles right there

you're gonna lose it regardless i kinda flip it around like that you can slide your

knife a little bit and it'll hit something right there gonna cut like that

kinda go through

and there is cartledge right there

if you feel something that's pretty crunchy there are little pieces of bones

that go through there

if you hit something just kinda go a little farther in until the coast is

clear

get rid of that or you could save it to

use it for uh... beans or if you wanna make a pork or something

you can certainly do that

and this is

what they kind of call a kansas city cut and that's a full spare

minus the breast bone

what i normally do

is i just box off a little bit

i get all the rough edges off because you kinda figure if something is sticking out

it's going to burn any way

kinda hit the skirt

and the reason why i cut this off this is a great piece of meat if you want to use

it for somethin great

i normally dont if you dont cut it off

when it heats up its going to pull up anyways

so you'll have rub you'll have smokey

color all over this part and then you'll have a bald patch right there

you don't really want that

grab that point and flip it around

we've got this

and if you like bacon or anything this is where the pork belly is the pork belly is

just the fatty back side of this

so this meat's pretty good right here it's got a lot of fat

but i always trim that off

could've been a snack

but it's not

trim that off because after it's cooked

when

say if i'm having a lunch service and i'm cutting these things

if i left that piece of meat on there the fat woiuld cook out from between the two

pieces of meat and they would just slide right off on the board

and that's not very attractive

and it's not going to have any bark on it

thing is we like bark

trim it off a little bit

so while you're doing all of this got it kinda trimmed run

your hands across the bones right there a lot of times

if you're getting mass-produced ribs

from various companies or even smaller companies

when they run these things through a saw they will go too fast and chip the

bones

sometime

now we've got our pork spare ribs trimmed up got breast bone off got it

trimmed up nicely

skirts trimmed back

little piece of fat is cut off the back we're going to pull off the membrane here at the barbeque place

i dont pull off the membranes but most people do

they definitely turn out better ribs and if you know we got a couple racks you might as well

pull them off

and what the membrane is its exactly a membrane

it's a membrane

goes right here

its going to be on the inside of the rack of ribs kinda protects the

the muscles from the organs and kinda

the stuff we're not gonna cook

to get that off

take a little knife

kinda get under there a little bit

and kinda peel it up just a little bit

tipically butter knives work really good

if you have a butter knife

i'm right handed so im going to

flip it around that way

it gets really really slippery so grab you some paper towels

that'll help you grip it

kinda go to town

hopefully it will come off in one big strip if you're lucky

oh i like getting lucky

it's a pretty nice looking rack of pork ribs

got the breast bone off the skirt off the membrane pulled off

unfortunately we've got a few bones poking through right here we've got a little term for that

its called shiners what shiner typically refers to the other side but in this case its this side

not much you can do about it just going to have to kinda

deal with it

it's an imperfect meat

well barbeque is an imperfect thing

to cook anyway

i think we are ready to put a rub on

so we've got our rub made

going to open that up just a little bit

i always like using a shaker for ribs instead of using a cup or like a hand and

throwing it on

i think it's a lot more important to have a nice presentation with pork ribs

because it's more delicate meat

but we need something to make the rub stick

i like to use olive oil

normally i use a squirt bottle

just put a little bit on there

useing olive oil is pretty awesome for steaks or really any kind of meat

if you're going to grill somethin

it's really a pretty great way to

start off anything

i think it's great for tri tip

kinda rub it down just a little bit

flip it over get the other side

not too much

just enough to make the rub stick

that's kind of the thing with brisket

i don't do anything like this

because there's so much blood that comes with the brisket it makes the rub stick anyway

the ribs dont really necessarily have a whole lot of blood they don't really

have a whole lot going on anyway so we got to add some stuff to it

i like to do

the meat side first

if you've got granules that are of different size you want to keep it moving

all the time so something doesnt settle to the bottom and

something doesnt end up too salty

salt normally settles towards the bottom so i put the holes up top

when i'm holding it

so kinda sprinkle it on there

and i like to look at a lot of pepper

i think that looks pretty good if you'll notice that its really even there's no

splotchiness i didn't get too much here i didn't get too little here

i think it's pretty good

if you've got ribs that are really really thin be careful with the salt cuz

it

doesn't take much salt to get it in there

delicately flip it over

for this side and it's just me being a little OCD perhaps

but i typically do the rub that way

so if there is a streak it's actually going

parallel to the bones

doesn't really make any sense

or mean anything

so there you go

we'll put this puppy on