Friday, July 14, 2023

Where there's smoke, there must be ...

If you said “Ribs”, then you win today’s incredible grand prize! Are you ready to hear what you have won? It is a grant of special permission from the PolyBear himself to read ZeroBear PolyBear’s up until today, never shared, Top Secret, award winning, dry rib rub recipe. You lucky Jackson Jambalaya reader! Few have ever been as fortunate as you. The King of all Fishes salutes you himself … maybe ... ok maybe not but it certainly reads well, doesn’t it? (KF Note: No salutations until sampling occurs.) 


Smoked Pork Ribs, a photo recipe post by ZeroBear PolyBear 

With a special Old Time, KFC slaw recipe dressing thrown in for free. 

Ingredients: 

2 Racks Pork Ribs
4 Tablespoons Yellow Mustard
4 teaspoons Black Pepper
1 Tablespoon Lawry’s Garlic Salt
1/2 cup ZBPB’s Dry Rib Rub



ZeroBear PolyBear’s Award Winning Dry Rib Rub:

1/4 Cup Paprika
1/4 cup White sugar
1/4 cup Dark Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Black Pepper
1 1/2 Tablespoons Salt
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
1 Tablespoon Dry Mustard
1 Tablespoon Ground Cumin
1 Tablespoon Ground Oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons Onion Powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Garlic Powder
1 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
1/2 teaspoon Allspice

 Directions:

Mix paprika, white sugar and brown sugar until the mixture is free of lumps then mix in the other ingredients. Store in a sealed container. I use a glass jar to avoid moisture This recipe is best doubled or tripled, because it will be better the second time used.  


Equipment needed:

- Smoker, or grill, or a BBQ pit that has a lid. In a pinch, a gas grill will work, as long as you can use wood chunks on it to make smoke.
- Lump or Briquette Charcoal, or wood (hickory, mesquite, oak, fruitwood, etc.)
If using charcoal, you will need wood chips or wood chunks (hickory, mesquite, oak, fruitwood, etc)

My method for smoking ribs (using a Webber type kettle grill):

Using a Webber style grill, lay out the charcoal in ribbon (also called snake by some who do this method) as far away from the place where the meat will be placed for smoking as possible. Construct a ribbon/snake of briquettes 2 layers thick and 2 briquettes wide. An 18 inch ribbon should be long enough for 2 or 3 hours smoking. After constructing the ribbon/snake, position the wood chunks or chips over first half of the ribbon. 


I used lump charcoal and mesquite wood chips when I smoked these ribs and pretty much covered the top of the first half of the snake with 2-3 cups of chips total.

 

Light the end of the snake that contains the wood chips. I use charcoal lighter and do not start smoking the ribs until the end of the charcoal snake is lit and the lighter fluid flame has gone out.

 


Back in the kitchen:

Remove the ribs from package and pat them dry with paper towels. If you look around, someone usually has ribs on special every weekend during the summer. If they are not on special, I will smoke or grill something else.

 

 

Using a sharp knife, pull or cut a small part of the membrane away from the back side of the rack. Then, using a paper towel to grip the membrane, pull it away from the back side. Be careful to remove all of the membrane. Gripping the membrane with a paper towel is by far the easiest way I have found to do this. I understand some folks just leave the membrane and that is ok too. Just makes the smoked ribs a little tougher.

 





Dry the ribs again before lightly coating the back side of the rack with yellow mustard. Then, heavily coat the ribs with the rib rub. Then turn the rack over and do the same with the front side.

 







I usually cut each rack in half to make it easier to position both racks on the limited grill space most kettle grills have. If your smoker or grill surface is large enough, then smoke the racks whole. If smoking a single rack, I never cut it in half.

 

Position the ribs as far away from the charcoal snake as possible while smoking them. Try to place the thicker portion of the racks toward the charcoal, since they need some extra heat to cook.

 

 

Place the lid on the grill with the lid vent over the ribs and the bottom vents fully open. Adjust the top vent to bring the internal temperature to 225 - 250 degrees F.


 

Smoke the ribs for 3 hours at 225 - 250 degrees F. The smoke from the wood chips needs to last at least 2 of the 3 hours. Check the grill every 30 - 40 minutes and rotate the ribs if one side seems to be cooking faster than the other. As the cook progresses, the ribs will begin shrinking and they will be easier to keep away from the heat as they shrink in size.

 

 

After 2 hours, check the internal temperature of the ribs with a probe thermometer. When the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F, remove the ribs, wrap them in aluminum foil, and place in the oven or back on the grill for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. I like my ribs tender, but with enough consistency that you can still bite them away from the bone without the bone falling out. Some like their ribs cooked to the point where the bone falls out. This will require another 1/2 hour to 1 hour wrapped in foil and perhaps a small drizzle of liquid inside the foil while cooking.




 If you like BBQ sauce, apply the sauce before wrapping in foil. You can also skip the foil wrapping and just sauce them for this last part of the cooking. Continue cooking in the oven or on the grill until the meat pulls back from the end of the bones. The ribs will be done when the bone feels a little loose when twisted or pulled. If cooking a whole rack, some folks will pick up the rack in the center with tongs and call them finished when the rack easily drapes downward when picked up.

I don’t use sauce on my ribs, since I love the smoked flavor and think sauce is an unnecessary addition to a very good tasting piece of pork. If cooking for others, I’ll ask if they want sauce and then add some to their rack if they say yes. You can also heat some BBQ sauce in a pan on the stove top or grill and serve it with the ribs if you like. 

I like to cut my ribs between the bones to serve them as individual rib sections.

 


Old fashioned KFC Slaw dressing:

Do you remember the slaw KFC served before they decided to buy their slaw in plastic bins from Sysco rather then make it themselves? This is their recipe. This recipe works great after an hour or two or three resting in the fridge. KFC always made their slaw with green cabbage only, at least a day in advance, and stored it in their walk-in cooler overnight before selling it. The slaw dressing pulls liquid out of the cabbage as it rests and will taste a lot better after resting for a while.

 Ingredients:

4 Cups raw green cabbage or raw cabbage slaw mix
3/4 cup Mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Heaping Tablespoon Tarragon
2 Tablespoons sugar or Splenda sweetener
1/2 teaspoon Salt


Place green cabbage or slaw blend mix in food processor with a knife attachment

Pulse the processor until the cabbage is chopped into 1/8 to 1/4 inch pieces. You can also just do this with a knife on a cutting board. The food processor is just easier.



Place chopped cabbage in a suitable bowl and mix in all of the other ingredients. Back in the day, KFC would have used a food grade Home Depot or Lowes sized bucket for their mixing. The dressing is very thick but will thin as the slaw chills and pulls liquid out of the cabbage.







Chill for at least an hour - 2 or 3 hours is better. We never think that far ahead, but chilling overnight is probably best.

 I like my ribs with a school lunch roll or two on the side, and I will share this recipe at some point in the future. If you can’t wait, it is on the internet.

 


 Time to eat!



Thanks for looking at my post.

God Bless You.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks mighty good. I guess I'm going to Sonny's for lunch, now.

Anonymous said...

Great looking ribs!

Anonymous said...

Cut the slaw-side by half and add some well-parlayed baked beans.

As decent puppies and tartar sauce are to fried catfish, so a quality baked bean recipe is to any smoked-pork meal.

Just dump 'em out of a can and you go to the principal's office for a whackin'.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the recipes. They are now posted on my refrigerator.

Anonymous said...

Oh, to be able to eat baked beans and candied meat (aka 'Barbecue')! But having been a hideous little girl, and an even uglier teen, I've had to learn to avoid sugar, in order to bring my looks up to 'Average'. Nowadays, I'm keeping the daily carbs intake below 10 grams - ALL carbs - not just the overt sugars. But to each his own. If I had the Shrimp Pink skin and gingerish hair of most Mississippians, I wouldn't need to obsess over diet and exercise. Must be nice...

However, the sight of ribs cooked-rare, raises an important question applicable to us all. When "they" start tampering our meat with MRNA vaccines, WILL COOKING DESTROY TRANSMISSIBILITY? Being afraid of parasites, I already cook meat thoroughly. Will that be enough, to destroy whatever Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab want to bio-engineer into our food?

Stuff About ZeroBear PolyBear said...

Mr. 11:04 am.

I hardly ever make baked beans anymore, unless we have company that requests them. Why? Well the first reason is that at my age, I don't need those calories a good serving of baked beans adds. It just isn't worth it long term and I have come to the point where I don't really miss having them on my plate. I do know how and make a very respectable baked bean and eventually I'll post that recipe with photos for you guys.

The second reason is somewhat personal, but we all seem to be friends here (right Kingfish?) so I'll share this shortcoming with you. They give me incredible farts and I don't seem to be able to make a recipe that doesn't do this.

Too much information? Sorry. I was suspicious you might not be all that happy to know about my failure to be able to eat high fiber beans without experiencing unpleasant (for others) side effects.

I do really like Great Northern beans cooked with ham and they don't bother me as much. Red Beans and rice are less powerful too.

Anonymous said...

Miz. 12:54

We go on and off of keto at our house. There are artificial sweetener companies that sell both white and brown sugar nearly zero carb sweeteners. They substitute very well for the high carb sugars I used in the rub shown in this post.

Using them makes a really good nearly zero carb rub.

I'm old enough that Frankenstein meats don't worry me all that much. I have a carbon fiber heart valve and am working my way through my second pacemaker after the battery crapped out on the first one. I take enough drugs each day to satisfy anyone. I have advanced degrees in Chemistry and Microbiology and my wife the same in nutrition, so I have learned to not believe all the research put out each week. If you don't like a report that XXXX will kill all of us within the next ten years, just wait a week and some other scientist will get a research grant (to help pay for his Condo in Florida) that proves the killer stuff is actually good for you.

I have accepted a personal policy to avoid lab produced chicken nuggets, made from pond algae until McDonalds switches to them, because my body is a temple.

Pond algae? My grad school thesis research involved a NASA project to study Anabaena flos-aquae A-37, with the intent to use it to produce food for astronauts on long term space flights. Eventually we produced brownies (that tasted like pond algae. Sadly, we mever duplicated the taste of Tang.

Stuff About ZeroBear PolyBear said...

Note: the 12:%4 comment is by ZeroBear PolyBear.

Anonymous said...

"...the sight of ribs cooked-rare..."

The pink is the smoke ring -- the thicker the better -- and, the cooking method is low and slow (195-205F vs 145F for loin cuts).

Anonymous said...

Low and Slow for ribs means offset grilling with charcoal and hickory or mesquite, on a rectangular grill with plenty of 'offset', for 8 hours at 225 plus two more hours covered at 225 in oven, to finish. I agree that ripping fascia off one side is important, but so is cutting partway between rib bones to help render off the fat. Bones should poke out at edges of ribs when done.

I and my people from TX never put sugar or mustard on ribs, nor mayo in slaw. Ribs are rubbed only with vinegar, salt, black pepper, fresh ground cumin and chipotle. Slow cooking caramelizes the meat without sugar!

Anonymous said...

12:54 here. Thanks for that tip about the sugar substitute. I assume it's Lakota, since much of the other granulated stuff is bad news, as you would know.

I have no problem with algae. Spirulina Algae (along with mushrooms) probably saved us, back when we believed government/academia lies, and had gone Vegan. Luckily, Veganism made DH and me so gassy, we had to quit. Praise the Lord! Now, we're almost totally Carnivore, and loving it. (and, as a bonus, after we'd crawled-out-from-under the "Food Pyramid", we were loathe to believe anything "The Science" was telling us - and definitely nothing that government was telling us "Science" said was so.)

Sooo.... when a certain other thing came along in 2020, we only listened to initial numbers coming out of South Korea (which have repeatedly been proven accurate). Which leads me to the newest Frankenmeat. We're hearing that efforts are being made, to incorporate MRNA vaccines into our foods. One assumes this is to make vaccination universal, and thus eliminate the pesky 'Control Group' threatening their profit model. Hopefully, they're JUST efforts, like the vax-bearing mosquitoes.

Thanks for replying to my post!

Anonymous said...

" They give me incredible farts and I don't seem to be able to make a recipe that doesn't do this.
Too much information? Sorry. "



Yep, That is TMI poly/zero bear.
Next New Years day ... don't drink a bottle of cheap champagne after eating a bowl of black-eyed peas.
January 2, 2024 will sound like an original AK-47 on full auto.

Anonymous said...

I hate to say it, but those are some of the most unappetizing ribs I have seen, and the slaw looks like it came from KFC. No thank you.

Anonymous said...

Will someone in the neighborhood please expose Zero to the product named Beano.

And Great Northern Beans, as the name implies, is totally yank-food - I don't care what your wife's great aunt said.

Anonymous said...

Yep! That 'cole slaw' is either KFC or the bagged Kroger product with the one-day expiration date window.

Anonymous said...

Gas Solutions- soak for 12 hours in water with a pinch of baking soda, making sure to change water and rinse the beans every three hours. Use epazote or ajwain toward the end of cooking. Cook in a pressure cooker which breaks down the sugars that causes fermentation problems. Beano is a good product too. If all else fails, turn on blazing saddles and let fly on the sly during the cowboy farting scene.


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