This was my first time smoking something low and slow to completion

Time: 10 Hours

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 4/5 (may be hard to find this cut)

Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of barbecue videos and a good number of them have mentioned different cuts of meat that I had never experienced before. One of them was beef ribs. Sure, I’ve had short ribs before, but never beef ribs that remind you of pork ribs. With that being said, when I saw these beef ribs at the grocery store, I picked them up. I knew that I wanted to go for the barbecue style that I was seeing in videos, which I believe is Texas style. That’s what led me to this recipe.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

Nothing was omitted, the ingredients are pretty simple.

1. The mustard is apparently optional and doesn’t affect the flavor. It is really just there to help the rub adhere to the ribs.

Tools:

• Grill/smoking setup

• Butcher paper/ Aluminum Foil

Cooking Review:

Preparation: 30 minutes

Just as with pork ribs, beef ribs have a membrane that should be remove. I would have loved to remove mine, but it was a real pain. In some areas, it would just rip apart into small pieces, and in others it just wouldn’t come off. After a good amount of struggling, I just went on to coating the ribs with mustard and seasoning them. I used an empty shaker to get an even mix of the salt and pepper over the surface. Be sure to coat even the edges of the ribs to maximize the flavors. Once the ribs were seasoned, I just waited on the grill to come up to temperature and set up a smoke tube with Cookin Pellets.

Cooking: 2 hrs 30 minutes + 6 hrs 30 minutes + 30 minute rest

Once everything had been set up, I put the ribs on the grill and let them smoke for 2 and a half hours. I used a wireless thermometer to track the temperature, so once it hit 165 degrees Fahrenheit internally, I wrapped the ribs in butcher paper. The recipe says it should take about 2 hours for the ribs to then hit a temperature of 202 degrees Fahrenheit, but mine took forever and I only got them to 200 before it was getting too late in the day to keep waiting. I also have to say that I had to boost the temperature about 5 hours into the second part of cooking for it to get to 200. Before I did this, the internal temperature was stuck at 180 for hours. Not sure if it was just me or the grill, but that caught me pretty off guard. Once I took the ribs off the grill, I let them rest for 30 minutes.

Analysis:

I never had smoked food seasoned with just salt and pepper, but I think I’ll be doing it more often. Despite those being the only things contributing to the flavor other than the smoke (the mustard contributes no flavor), these ribs came out plenty flavorful. As expected from such a low and very slow cook, they were perfectly tender. I will say that I wish the smokiness was amped up a little bit. It was probably lacking in that department because of my setup and I didn’t refill the smoke tube once it ran out of pellets. I also wish that I was able to get the membrane off, which did get in the way of eating the ribs. Other than those small complaints and the amount of time this recipe took, I’m giving this recipe a 9/10. I think if I had a better smoking setup my personal result could’ve been even better and if you have a legit smoker I think you’d love what you get.