St. Louis Style Ribs
One of the easiest smokes I have done with arguably my best results
It’s week 2 of watching the Birds playoff games and I decided on making some smoked St. Louis style ribs for the game. It was my first time smoking them and I was just going to figure it out as I went because I’m not a professional and who cares.
As per usual I went to Arnie’s Gourmet Butcher in Cherry Hill, NJ to grab some meat. I went with 4 racks of St. Louis style ribs weighing about 2.5-3lbs /rack and sat them in the fridge overnight. Me being the average smoker that I am I then proceeded to watch WAY too many hours of smoking videos on YouTube to figure out what I wanted to do. What I saw for the most part was a lot of actual professionals go by sight on ribs more than temp (even though temp is still important). The main videos I took tips from were:
Matt with Meat Church
The Rib Comparison with Heath Riles
These videos were great and for my first time doing things gave me a lot of good tips to carry into the future.
Ok now let’s get to how I actually smoked this meat:
-I loaded my Traeger with their Apple Pellets and set it to 225
-I trimmed up the end bones and some fat to square up the cut like the professionals do because obviously I’m just as good….
-Only real pain in the ass thing about this was taking the membrane off. It was a lot easier with a paper towel to pull it off and once I got 2 off the other 2 were easier
-I used mayo as a binder for the ribs, then generously threw on Meat Church Holy Cow and The Gospel All Purpose for the rub with just a pinch of Traeger Blackened Saskatchewan Rub and let sit for approx. 15 minutes to have the rub sink in
-The ribs were laid meat side up and left on the smoker for about 1.5 hours hours rolling at 225
-I sprayed with a little apple cider vinegar and let sit again for an hour
-At around 170ish and seeing the bones starting to poke out (the racks were all about 3-5 degrees in difference) I started the wrap
-I used 2 layers of foil so the bones didn’t poke through and fu*k everything up
-Threw pats of butter down with some brown sugar and laid the ribs meat side down
-Ribs were all wrapped and placed back on for about another hour and hit the 200 mark and it was time to brush them up
-Flipped them meat side up again and used a homemade hot-honey sauce (I legit forget how I made it) and “Rib Rack’s Bourbon Glaze” with a little extra sprinkle of rub
-I set the slabs back on the smoker for about 15 minutes to let the sauce tack up
-Ribs finished and wrapped about 3.5 hours in total on the smoker
Re-wrapped in foil and placed on a baking tray with another layer of foil over it and when we took them out at half time to eat they were still steaming and temp was solid. Smoke penetrated well and I blinked and the 4 racks were devoured by some hungry Eagles fans. The rib had a great bend to it and had the perfect combo of a good clean bite, but also able to come off super easy. Honestly for my first time making ribs I can’t tell if I’m a prodigy or if things just went my way that day because sh*t legit turned out perfect.
All in all this really wasn’t a super complicated process and left me looking forward to doing it again. I would love to try some baby-back ribs which I know requires more work (or at least the internet tells me that). In my opinion if you are just getting into smoking it seems like a solid jumping point before you get into the larger and longer smokes, or you know do what I did and buy the smoker and have your first smoke be a 20lb brisket with a 2 day smoke and rest. Trial by smoke and fire I guess.