A rainy Saturday in the Houston, TX area calls for some comfort food; it just so happened that it dovetailed with a family gathering for some cousins that I was "volunteered" to feed. So, a pretty simple assortment: three racks of St. Louis style spareribs, and a pack of beef chuck riblets for the person who apparently doesn't like pork (a cousin who I now refer to as the "black sheep commie of the family").
Rinsed and membrane removed, I used my homemade rib rub on the pork spareribs, after a slather of Dijon mustard. I'm a fan of doing the NaCL separately, so a healthy dose of kosher salt and cracked Tellicherry peppercorns finished that prep.
The beef chuck riblets, which are quickly becoming one of my real favorites. While the membrane on beef ribs is a bit tougher to strip, I took off a few layers and cut a deep score at each joint. They were slathered in molasses and Worcestershire as a binder, then liberally seasoned with kosher salt, garlic powder, dry mustard, and freshly cracked Tellicherry peppercorns.
All the ribs were held overnight wrapped in the fridge. The pork spareribs went in my Blaz'n Grid Iron at 180° for two hours to pick up some smoke, them I bumped them to 235°. After the first hour, I added a spritz of apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and Southern Comfort. Also, if you're in need of a reliable and effective spray bottle, I highly recommend the Solo One-Handed Pressure Sprayer ... a nice mist rather than stream, and easy to clean as well.
The beef chuck riblets went in at the 3.5-hour mark for the pork spares to finish out the ride.
I spritzed every 45 minutes until I hit the 6.5 hour mark. I also added a light dusting of Demerara sugar to the pork ribs during the last 45 minutes to give them a light glaze. The temps were in the mid-60's all day and the CookinPellets Perfect Mix provided the fuel (and taunted my neighbors).
Those chuck riblets are nothing short of awesome and the flavor was utterly superb.
Overall, the ribs were a hit with the family. I'm likely going to scale back the initial smoke temps to 160° for the next run as the ribs were just a hair over where I like them. I had fully meant to make a homemade SoCo & Peach BBQ Sauce for the pork ribs but the day got away from me. Well, there will be others. All in all, a damn good way to spend the weekend and my cousins (even the freedom-hating non-pork eater) seemed happy.
