I finally got around to getting those beef short ribs from the plate that I’ve been talking about. These are particularly juicy ribs that come from the mid-section of a cow’s sixth through eighth ribs, above the stomach. These are not to be confused with beef short ribs from the chuck, which sits a bit farther ahead.
This was pricier cut and it cost me around 5.45 per pound, for 12 pounds. I picked up a set of two USDA Choice Angus cuts from Restaurant Depot. I guess you could say they were subprime.
I’ve been wanting to do this particular cut for some time now – I’ve actually never had a beef rib before, despite the 22 years I spent in Texas. At places like La Barbecue in Austin, beef ribs can run up to $22 per pound. With the bone and meat, that’s around 1.5 pounds, or $33 dollars. Pitmasters apparently hate making them; they take up space in the smokers and margins are low.
Beef bones are rather large. With by $60-something 12 pounds of meat I estimated that I could feed only six people. From my standpoint, I could definitely see how it would be hard to make this for brisket-sized parties.
The ribs come with three bones each and are mostly trimmed. I opted to get rid of the silverskin on top, though recipes appear to be mixed on whether or not to do this. I figured the meat would be rich enough to not need the extra fat anyways.
I once again went with a salt and pepper rub the night before. I have a lot of it sitting around in the apartment, for obvious reasons. Franklin’s recipe interestingly calls for around the same amount of rub as needed for a full brisket; eventually it just got too hard to put it all on. I wrapped the meat in my never ending supply of freezer paper and let it sit.
I got started the next day at around 9 a.m. My planned timeline was to have the meat start on the preheated grill beginning at 10 a.m., cook for eight hours and then rest for 30 minutes. I largely aimed for a temperature for around 275. After using wood chunks for the first two or three hours, I intermittently opened the grill to spritz the meat with water to keep the ends from burning.
The ribs actually ended up cooking a bit faster than I had expected, reaching 203 degrees around 5 p.m. Since no one was here, I ended up trying to defy the laws of thermodynamics by continuing to spritz the meat to try to keep the temperature low. All that really resulted in was a very crunchy bark.
The outside was probably a bit overdone (i.e. toasty) depending on which rack you got, but the inside turned out quite nice (and not actually chewy, just moist).
And we ended up with a collection of fairly large beef bones. I had no idea what to do with them. Broth, I suppose, but they got thrown away.
In other news, I’m considering adding more pages to the blog, maybe with recipes and other things that I’ve learned using the Weber. Maybe I’ll also have a page solely of pictures of Jennifer eating things (I have a lot).