Smoked Individual Beef Ribs
Can you smoke up individual beef rubs? In short (hah) of course you can! Unlike individual pork ribs which i find shrivel up way to much to cook individually, beef ribs are fantastic individually. AND you get a much higher bark per bite ratio because of it!
YouTube Instructional: https://youtu.be/LaoSDGY0X-Q
2 Ribs will feed 1, and these took 8.5 hours to cook!
Ingredients:
Individual (or really a whole slab) of beef ribs - I use chuck in this example!
Kosher Salt
Coarse Black Pepper
Dry Garlic (granulated or powdered)
Your favorite rub (I’m using my special coffee rub!)
Your favorite BBQ sauce - something sweet and tangy I find works great with coffee rub, so think KC style
Yellow mustard (optional)
olive oil (optional)
Apple Cider Vinegar & Beer (optional spritz)
Step 1: Trim and Salt
Trim off any really hard layers of fat, and square up the ribs (for presentation).
OPTIONAL: there is a really hard membrane on the back of each rib. On pork ribs we usually want to pull this off, but I have fouind that keeping them on beef ribs in general for the smoke works out better. Otherwise your ribs tend to fall apart and don’t hold together well. Its really easy to remove after the cook before biting in!
Apply kosher salt to each side, using the golden salt rule of about 3/4 a tsp to each lb of meat. Put in your fridge on a wire rack uncovered overnight!
Step 2: Apply Binder and dry rub
For the simple salt, pepper, and garlic rib (top). I put a coating of olive oil all over the ribs, and then coat the sides in garlic powder (or granulated) and coarse black pepper. Remember the ribs are already salted, so you don’t need to add any more salt here!
For the fancier rubbed rib (bottom) , I put a layer of yellow mustard down before applying my coffee rub. As with the other rib, make sure that you dont add more salt here. These ribs are already salty enough for our cook!
Step 3: Low Temp Smoke
Preheat smoker to 180 degrees and put the ribs on the top rack. Smoke these for 2 hours ignoring internal temp!
Now bump temp to 225 degrees and begin spritzing the ribs with liquid (I am using 50% lager beer and 50% apple cider vinegar!)
Our goal now is about 195 degrees
Step 5: Baste ribs with bbq sauce (optional) until tender
If you are planning to make wet ribs, begin basting the ribs every 30 min or so with bbq sauce.
We are looking for our temp probe to go into all spots of the meat incredibly easily. Tenderness is the name of the game, not temp, but in reality we are looking for just over 200, maybe 203 for these things to be absolutely perfect!
Step 6: Rest the ribs
Pull the ribs from the smoker when they reach probe tender, and cover in tin foil. I usually place them in a cold oven for about 15-20 minutes for consuming.
Enjoy!
