Beef Short Ribs

40mph winds and 12 hours of power loss later….

Well I still have 100lbs of beef in a freezer (it’s still ok after the power went out thanks top loading freezer) and the need to make myself feel complete through food so I thought why not close my eyes, point at meat, and smoke it.

The gods of beef decided that my next smoke would be beef short ribs. I had 3/pack all 3 bone ribs. I was expecting something a little different when I took them out of the pack. The beef ribs I keep seeing on the internet are usually the “dino bones” with very large bones and the cuts I had were more flat, square, and with smaller bones covered completely by the fat and meat. It was my first time smoking beef ribs so as per usual I went to the glories of YouTube to teach me what the fu*k I’m supposed to do. Surprise surprise, I went with Matt from Meat Church to teach me the ways of the beef. I really should branch out eventually but GOD his videos are just so simple and the spices his company makes are just delightful.

I did lose power from the absolute tornado winds we had rolling though South Jersey but we’ll get into that later.

Let’s get into how I attempted this:
-I started by loading my Traeger with a blend of Traeger Apple and Reserve pellets and set the smoker to 275
-The ribs were pretty cut down already so I just removed the silver skin and trimmed the fat up top
-I read a couple of things that just said scoring the membrane was enough on the bottom as that is one of the only things actually holding the ribs together, and in beef it’s ok to leave it (unlike pork ribs)
-I used olive oil as the binder, and at this time realized I was out of most of my rubs
-Traeger makes a black garlic as well as a citrus chicken rub so we said fu*k it we’ll do it live and see how this blend BBQ’s
-Meat set for 20 min to let the it sweat the spices
-Ribs went on around 10am keeping in mind this may be a 6-8hr smoke

-Checked about an hour in, spritzed with some apple cider vinegar, and planned to let it roll for a few hours

*At this time I realized I had to head to work for a few hours and some meetings which is a MAIN reason I love this pellet grill. I can be away from it for a few hours and not worry about temp
I was able to call my wife around 1pm and instruct her on how to check temp, spray, and fill the hopper which I knew was running low. Bonus pictures from a loving woman wo learned where my pellets were and how to fill a hopper

-One trip to Ace Hardware (great selection) and the grocery store later I was stocked back up and got what I needed to make some Armadillo Eggs (check out my other post from today)
-Ribs hit my 170ish mark probably around 3pm but I got home closer to 4pm and wrapped them closer to the 182 mark
-I went with foil again, and covered the top in the liquid beef tallow I was smoking simultaneously from the rib trimmings
-Around 540pm the winds from the gods started and as me and the wife were staring out the window we heard a pop and lost power
-Luckily the ribs were just about right when I went to check on them and had them internal of 203

I did notice some things in this cook I wasn’t prepared for. Beef ribs are a very fatty piece of meat and my old nemesis returned. I probably could have taken a little more fat off but not much which is a problem I face; scared of over trimming. I also think next time I would like to approach this as a full 8-9 hour smoke and roll the temps a bit lower to help render out the fat that’s in the middle of the ribs.

Losing power didn’t help either as I would have liked to leave them on a touch longer and get close to the 210ish mark. My test subjects were the crew I had at the brewery and all in all everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The chicken and garlic rub turned our surprisingly good on beef, but I do still much prefer the ones designed for BBQ. I have another pack of beef ribs in the freezer and for SURE will be approaching them as a extremely average smoker and probably have things I want to change again. Maybe this time I’ll smoke outside of hurricane season too.

Bonus dog picture because why not.