Smoked Beef Plate Ribs

One of the things I have wanted to try my hand at cooking for rather a long whole, was a whole beef plate rib section. This is perhaps the most visceral of meat cuts off of the steer, often sectioned into short ribs, or chuck ribs, I don't often see them as a rack. I finally got the chance, as my frequent cooking partner in crime and I got away, largely to do some work on a rental property of his, in Lake Tahoe. Prior to leaving, Rob managed to secure a dry aged, Angus, three bone rack of plate ribs for us to cook. We would cook this on his BGE, which is a great cooker for the altitude at Lake Tahoe. We ended up using lump, two medium sized chunks of white oak, running at 275°F for the first 3 hours, and then bumping to 300°F for the last 2 hours and change.

The rack, unadorned, was well trimmed, and required little more from me that unwrapping from the paper. I decided to use a commercial rub, Ted and Barney's H3, with some added black pepper and a small amount of smoked Spanish paprika.

 

Nice Rack

 

Rubbed and Ready

From here, it was onto the cooker, not a whole lot more to do, than sit and wait. Or go build a bunk bed and sort of do what I was supposed to be doing.

 

About halfway

The reason for the split temperature was just to get a little more smoke around the meat before getting the meat cooked. I find that if I go hot early in the cook, the smoke flavor and aroma is a lot more faint. There was no hurry, sitting on the deck, about the only worry was calling in a bear or something.

 

Yup!

Well, that looks about done, check it with the thermometer, I have no idea what temperature it was, it was tender and the thermometer slid right in. Time to wrap and let it rest for a couple of hours.

 

Done, look at at that smoke ring

Some vegetables were harmed in the making of this dinner.

If you need captions to understand those photos, I just don't know about you. In any event, dinner was served.

 

No Sauce!

Without a doubt, this is the way to cook chuck plate ribs, and the dry aged beef was outstanding. Yes, those are just simple Japanese quick cure pickles. A really nice complement to the rich and smoky beef.