Did Someone Say Ribs?

Let me start this off by saying…  my in-laws rock!  While I had to go in to the office to work this past Saturday, they, along with my wife, worked out in our yard and got it in decent shape.  For all the hard work that they did, I had to pay them back somehow.  And how does someone with a passion for BBQ pay back a favor?  Why, with BBQ, of course!  And luckily for me, the requested meat was ribs!

Now the big question…  baby backs or spares?  After much deliberation, spares won out.  This entailed a trip to my local Sam’s Club and purchasing a three-pack of spare ribs.  I trimmed the ribs down to a St. Louis style cut and then seasoned them three different ways.

The rib racks

I’ll describe the rack preparations starting at the top and rotating clockwise.  I applied lemon juice to the first rack and sprinkled liberal amounts of Willie’s Hog Dust to the rack .  By the way, Willie’s Hog Dust works great on pork butt.  The second rack (the one oriented vertically) was slathered in Uncle Kenny’s Spicy BBQ Sauce and covered liberally with Spicy #13 Rub from Bandiola Spice Company.  This rack was thus dubbed the “Hot Rack”.  The final rack was slathered in Sweet Baby Ray’s Original BBQ Sauce and rubbed with Plowboy’s Yard Bird Rub.

The racks were put in the smoker (along with the trimmings from the spare ribs… lesson here: leave no meat behind) to cook at 250 degrees Fahrenheit using Kingsford competition briquettes and oak wood.  After about four hours, the ribs were done.  And they sure looked good!

Ribs are done!

Since I used sauces in the rib preparation, I decided to pass on glazing the ribs before pulling them out of the smoker.  As you can see, there is a nice rich deep red color to the ribs.  It was perfectly done, with nice bite marks being left with each bite.  Obviously everyone else agreed, even my wife (who is adamantly opposed to eating meat with bones in it)…

The survivors...

Now I confess I’m a bit of a heat lover.  I think that most every food can benefit from a bit of spice and heat.  While I was pleased with how all the racks turned out, I was especially pleased with the results from my Hot Rack.  The combination of  Bandiola Spice Company’s Spicy #13 Rub and Uncle Kenny’s Spicy BBQ Sauce gave the ribs a sneaky back heat that I really enjoyed!

Hope this inspires you to get out and fire up the cooker this coming weekend and cook those ribs that you’ve been meaning to cook for so long now!