Beef Ribs

Welcome to the new blog. I've recently purchased my first smoker, the Weber Smokey Mountain, and I thought it was about time I wrote about my hobby. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet so instead I'm going to post about some wonderful beef ribs I cooked up on my kettle grill last summer. The ribs were from Donald Russell.



To start I've cut the ribs into more manageable sections, two or three ribs each piece.

Next is the rub. This was a mix of black pepper, chili powder, brown sugar and garlic powder. Rub it into the meat, this really needed more rub, I underestimated here. For best results cover them and refrigerate for 8-12 hours to let the rub get to work.

Here I'm getting the grill ready. I've filled the chimney starter with long life coals (also known as heat beads) and prepared a layer of unlit briquettes on half the grill.

The grill has been warming up for a few minutes now. I dumped the lit briquettes on top of the unlit ones, next to them is a metal tray full of water. This helps regulate the temperature while cooking.

If I was cooking meat straight on the grill for a long period it would also catch the fat and stop flare ups and burning.

 Here I'm searing the ribs over a medium heat, about 10 minutes turning once. I had to do a bit of shuffling here, my cooking area wasn't big enough for all the ribs at once.

As always with a kettle grill the lid should be left down for actual cooking, I've only opened it up to take a photo.

Once they were seared nicely I put them in a foil tray and brought out the sauce.

The sauce is a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon and a good quality BBQ sauce, I would normally make my own but this was a weeknight and it was already getting late.

I've smothered the ribs with the sauce, next I got some foil and tightly covered the tray, making sure it was a reasonable seal.

 Now the easy part. I stuck it on the grill (covered of course) and left it for an hour. After an hour I came back and turned the ribs, spooned some sauce from the tray over them, re-covered the tray and put them back in for another hour.

 Here they are all done. They look pretty impressive I have to say. This was my first attempt at these and I'm pleased with the outcome.

This lot serves six people comfortably or four with seconds.



I served them with cornbread (that's the muffins) and a very good Macaroni Cheese recipe I got off Meemalee's Kitchen blog. These cornbread muffins were from a packet (Aunt Jemima®) but I prefer my own recipe which is a little bit lighter, but again I didn't really have the time to do it (okay I probably did but I was lazy).