Hot and Fast Ribs

It was experiment time again, and the Landarc BBQ kitchen was to test out the idea of cooking ribs at a much higher temperature range than I normally do. This is in keeping with my working with hotter temperatures across the board, largely inspired by Donnie Thomas down in Texas and Mark Redman in Georgia, the two men who introduced me to hot-n-fast for brisket. The ribs were from Beeler's Pork, which uses their own hog breed they call Haluka hogs, this is some good pork, always full of flavor and well marbled. I hit it with some Dizzy Dust salt-free and then a higher sugar variation of Bob's Mother Rub to get a little more black pepper and some salt. Here they rack is ready to go.

 

The rack rubbed up

This was actually done 24 hours prior to the cook, as I was messing around with getting more flavor into the meat as well. I decided to let it sit, tightly wrapped overnight and to see how much liquid was in the wrapping the next day. There was no liquid in the wrapping at all. I still believe there is no truth to the idea that rubbing with a rub the night before leads to dry ribs.

 

Here are the wrapped ribs

The ribs were pulled from the rather dry wrappings, allowed to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes or so, while I got the kettle going, I decided to shoot for 300F as a target for this cook. The ribs went on at 300F, there was a little bit of apple wood over Wicked Good lump charcoal. You can see that the rub has changed the color of the meat quite a bit.

 

Ribs cured in dry rub overnight

From here, it was really rather easy, I let the kettle go, it ran along just fine at 300F up to 325F, where it finished. The ribs were done in around 3 hours and change, and the color was excellent. I strive to have this color and texture at lower temperatures and rarely get it this nice.

 

Yes, they did look that good

This is exactly the color I want when I cook ribs, and the fact that I was done at just a little over 3 hours, amazing to me. There was weep, the Pig honey, all over these ribs. Note, I did not spritz or mop, this was all about a sprint of a BBQ cook.

 

Clean cuts, smoked through

There was nothing about these ribs to suggest that there were any shortcuts taken, these had a wonderful smoke flavor, the rub had worked into the meat, they were juicy and the surface had a tender bark, bit through to the very definition of the word. I had gotten lazy and did a modified St. Louis cut, which is to say, some of the tips were left on. Still, these ribs were as good as I would ever need ribs to be. (again, I apologize for the pictures, phone camera, what can you do?)