Ribs Again - the Pork Diaries

Mary's plate - ribs, sweet corn, and summer vegetables.

Saturday was a long day of cooking for me.  I brewed a small batch of "Brussels Black" - a dark Belgian ale that is fermenting away in the basement as I write this, and then I set out to do a practice run on some ribs. Those were cooked over charcoal with hickory smoke on the big unit out in the back of the Alexandria house.

My plan was to work a bit on the rub recipe, and I decided to go with a Kansas City style that features brown sugar and cayenne.  If you Google this type of thing you'll find that some ink is given to the difference between the K.C. and Memphis styles.  They saw K.C. style uses a sauce in addition to the rub, while Memphis style doesn't...neither Mary nor I found that any sauce was needed on these when all was said and done.

As you can see I started with a very meaty half rack.

The recipe I was using called for gobs of spices, and I figured that since I was using a half rack, I should reduce the recipe.  I cut it in half, and then saw that two spices I like were missing, and I added them back in - powdered mustard and cumin.  So that's where I am coming from...but I may leave the cumin out if I'm ever competing with this recipe.

The big unit, as the hickory smoke started.

Once the prep was done and the half rack rubbed, I went out to start up the big unit.  It wasn't long before those coals were going.  I put the meat on - indirect, since I have a lot of real estate in there, and after a little time to sear started adding hickory.

I had some other prep to get back to - I had to shuck some sweet corn, cut up vegetables, and things like that.  I also wanted to make some ice cream for dessert - I bought some fresh raspberries for this to combine with some dark chocolate chips I had stored in the fridge.

Boogs is bored.

After all of that, Tessie and I went out onto the deck while the ribs cooked.  As usual, she was a little bored with the whole thing, but she liked being outside with me.

I enjoyed a stogie while things were under way, and I'll admit to having a nice Fat Tire IPA for accompaniment.

Late summer dinner of ribs and grilled vegetables.

The upshot of all this is the ribs, which were done in about 2.5 hours or so.  I took them a little farther than I did in the last batch I made a few months ago, so they were done well enough that they did literally fall off of the bone.

There's a photo below of the platter.  Usually we have a little left from a half rack - we did this time too.  But they were gone by lunchtime Sunday.

And neither of us used any sauce on the leftovers.