Re pork ribs, I hesitate to post because I am tempted to write a book and I know few will read it.
It might be best if we had a Pork Rib Thread. I'll try to make this short.
It took many years, but I finally have the tenderness thing down. It's the flavor that's not right.
I want ribs that are addicting. You take a bite and you must have a second bite. You finish a rib and you must take another rib. This continues until you are full and you realize you forgot about the coleslaw. But it's too late.
I've had this happen twice. Once was a long time ago at an Olney Days thing where all the restaurants would get together in one place and provide a small portion of a menu item for a reasonable charge. In this case, it was a restaurant in Olney called Pumpernickel's. The owner was an extremely large individual, if you know what I mean. In excess of 300#. But he had these pork ribs that were to die for. He had them already cut into pairs and staying warm in a very large red (what I assume to be a tomato-sauce base) sauce pan. They were three dollars. This was like 25 years ago.
They were so delicious, and I couldn't stop eating them, and that experience re-inspired me to try to perfect ribs after having given up for seven full years prior. This was way before the internet and YT was popular.
I would love to have the recipe for that sauce, but that guy passed long ago.
So I got a recipe from the Redskins Newsgroup on Usenet. This was in the late 90s. I still suspect the guy who I got the recipe from was Jumbo. The recipe was called Rendezvous Ribs. It involved making a rub and making a sort of vinegar brine from the rub. Then cooking them on a Weber. It was a 30 min cook. This was, of course, a copycat of the Rendezvous Restaurant ribs in Memphis.
I tried it and it didn't work for me. The ribs had good flavor but were still tough coming off the Weber.
Long story short, I ended up cooking them curled up in a big spaghetti pot with a little water in it in the oven with the lid on for several hours, low temp. It was my own idea, I've never heard of anybody doing this. My thinking at the time was to keep them moist.
The end result was what I wanted taste-wise. It was addicting! The flavor was amazing! The ribs were tender, juicy, everything you wanted. My wife loved them! Everybody loved them! The only thing wrong is they would tend to fall off the bone, which I know is not ideal. I played around with that, but never could come up with a fool proof formula for pulling them when they were tender and not falling off the bone.
Ideally, one would take these ribs out of the pot, and sear them over a fire such as a hot Weber for just a few minutes. Then they would have a nice thin crust and have nice color. But because they wanted to tend to fall off the bone, this was a challenge. Nonetheless, they were really good. They were addicting!
So eventually I moved onto smoking them. First it was on my cheap $50 water smoker which was all I had back then.
At about this time, I discovered amazingribs.com where Meathead explained the breakdown of collagen which was required to get tender juicy ribs. No other recipe I had ever seen explained this like Meathead did.
And I did finally get that down regarding tenderness. But they are not addicting. I've tried dozens of recipes.
For example, the Meat Church rubs involving dry rubs and also sauces - Rib Candy apple-cherry-habanero to name just one - and yeah, they are delicious. For the first bite. And the second bite. These would be similar to comp ribs. But I cannot eat more than two ribs because I start feeling sick. And that is exactly the problem with comp ribs. Mad Scientist BBQ explains this well. For back yard ribs, you really want something else - something less rich.
When I first read this regarding comp ribs vs backyard ribs, I did not believe it. I want the best ribs ever! I want comp ribs! But I was wrong. And MSB was right. We really don't want comp ribs in the back yard.
MSB recommends salt & pepper rub and that's it. No sauce. He says he loves them. Dry ribs is how he likes them. Sauce is optional. That's great. And yes, I have to agree, they are better than the super-rich ribs that make you feel sick after several bites, with or without sauce.
But they're not addicting!
So that brings me back to the rendezvous rub. And I've experimented with this, but now I'm on the smoker. And the end result is just not right.
I have to conclude that the smoke is messing up the rendezvous ribs. After all, the restaurant in Memphis does not use smoke.
So that's where I'm at.
I love the process of smoking ribs! It's great fun and very satisfying to get the fire and the temp and the smoke just right, and pull those babies at the right time and have them perfectly tender and juicy and full of flavor.
And they are very good. I am somewhat proud of them.
But they are not addicting.
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