My Favorite BBQ Ribs

RON HAZELTON:
Now I like to think of home improvement in the broadest sense of the word, and at least in my opinion, very few things improve a home more than good cooking, especially good grilling. Now I learned most of my grilling techniques from my dad and I've been honing them over the years, but I'm getting pretty close to perfection in the way that I fix ribs.

So I thought I'd share my technique with you. Now there are plenty of beef folks out there who will give me an argument on this, but I prefer pork for my ribs. Either baby back or St. Louis cuts.  I make sure to take the membrane off the inside. This makes for more tender meat and allows flavors to penetrate more deeply.

A table knife and a bit of pulling does the job. Now the flavor in really good ribs comes from three places. The smoke, the sauce and the dry rub that goes on the meat before it even goes onto the grill. Now this recipe for dry rub comes from my good friend Ray Lamp, better known as Dr. Barbecue.

In a mixing bowl, I'm combining one half cup salt, one half cup turbinado sugar, one quarter cup brown sugar, a tablespoon ground garlic, tablespoon of ground onion, two tablespoons paprika, two tablespoons chili powder, two tablespoons ground pepper, two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, one tablespoon of thyme, a tablespoon of cumin, and finally, one teaspoon of nutmeg.

Now, I'm just going to take a spoon and stir all these dry ingredients together. Okay, now I'm going to just spoon some of this onto the ribs - and now and this is why they call it a rub, I'm going to rub this into the meat.

Okay, the meat's ready. Now I'm going to prepare the fire. For smoke, I use hardwood. I really prefer cherry or hickory, but last year I had take down an ash tree in the front yard and I'm bound and determined to use that wood any way I can.

So first of all, I'm going to cut these round pieces here into halves and then again, into quarters. And then drop them in water to soak. Now in my book, the only way to cook really good ribs is with charcoal. And I use something called an indirect method.

You notice I put all of my coals over here on one side of the grill. Now to that, I'm going to add some of the wet wood, just lay this right up on the coals here.  The idea behind wetting this is that we really want, I really want that wood to smoke and not burn. So I like to get it good and wet.

Now good ribs have to be cooked slowly and they have to be kept moist. So the slow part comes by using the indirect method, keeping them from being directly over the coals. And one thing that will help keep them moist is this.

I set a pan over on this side and to that, I'm going to add a little bit of apple juice. I could use wine or water or some other kind of fruit juice - I think apple juice imparts a really nice flavor. Now I'm ready to put the ribs on, then lay these on, bone side down. One there and one here.

The top goes on - now I'm going to close the air vents down, this one on top and this one on the bottom. Want to get the temperature down to about 325 degrees in here and let these guys cook for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.

Okay, that looks great. I'd say this part of the cooking process is complete. Now I'm going to remove these from the grill over here to a carving board. And my next step is to brush on some honey. You know, the hardest part about grilling ribs for me at least, is waiting until they're done, because you just keep smelling them and getting hungrier and hungrier and good ribs take a while to do. They need to be slow cooked to be really tender.

Now the next part of the cooking process is what is going to make these fall off the bone tender. I'm going to do is take a foil pan, put about an inch of apple juice in the bottom. Now just to make these fit a little bit better, I'm going to cut them in half and then I'm going to put them in the pan.

And it's okay if they sort of lay up on edge a little bit here. Before I put them back in, I'm going to cover them with some aluminum foil.  Now by this point, the ribs have picked up a lot of smoke flavor. So what I'm kind of doing here is almost baking them. That apple juice is going to provide a lot of moisture. Again, I want to keep the temperature here at about 325 and I'll put this in here and let it go for probably about one more hour.

Well, now these should be really tender. Let's pull the - see, this is the process, that steam coming up from that apple juice is what really finishes these off. Okay, so I'm just going to bring these now over to the cutting board one last time here.

I'm going to brush on some sauce. I like to make my own sauce but I tell you, there are some very good prepared sauces out there. So either way. And when you prepare ribs like this, that smoke flavor is in the ribs. It's not in the sauce. It's just in the meat.

Going to pop these back on the grill just for a few minutes. Let that sauce cook in a little bit and I'll put a little bit more sauce on the rib side of these. Now you can see by removing that membrane on the back, how the meat is just really separating from the -from the ribs. That's really good.

All right, I pronounce these ribs done. Now you can serve these - these are half slabs now, can serve them as half slabs. I like to cut them up into individual ribs. Just makes it easier for folks to eat them.
[MUSIC]
Well I'd say there's only one thing left to do with these babies and that's, enjoy.