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Recipe: Barbeque Spare Ribs
Speaker: Chef Alec Lipschutz
"Hey everybody, it is Chef Alec. We are in the Aramark kitchen. It is National Barbecue Month, so we're getting ready to have a hot grill summer. I'm going to show you how to make some amazing spare ribs today.
All right, so we're going to start with some St. Louis-style spare ribs. You can pretty much get these at any local grocery store as well as specialty stores if you want to get like a really cool cut or a really cool heritage breed of it. But we're going to start by seasoning it with a spice blend we made. This is just salt, pepper, smoked paprika, brown sugar, and red chili flake. I like to make sure we go a little light on the brown sugar because it will tend to burn if you overuse it, but it does add a really good sweetness to balance out the flavor profile.
All right, so we're going to go ahead and season this. I like to do a relatively light layer, but you definitely want to make sure that it's well covered. A really important thing here is to let your spice sit into the meat as long as you can—4 hours, 8 hours, even overnight is ideal, because as you can see, there's a big difference between a freshly seasoned piece of rib and one that's been sunken in. So the fact that the spices get to seep into the meat, it really allows it to capture the smoke and it really holds smoky essence and gives it a way different flavor. So as you can see, the meat that was seasoned in advance has a much different color and look than the freshly seasoned one. And like I said, that really allows the smoke or the general heat to seep in and it also just gives it a beautiful crust when it's done.
All right, we are ready to start cooking. We're going to put this in the smoker at 225° for approximately 2 hours or until it hits an internal temperature of 165°. Now, if you don't have a smoker, no problem—you can put it in a grill with a cover on or even in an oven, so long as the temperature is right. Once again, that's 225°.
All righty, this just came out of the smoker. It's hitting 165, which is just perfect. And now we're going to wrap it up. First, we're going to lay down some of the spice rub that we used already and just a little bit of your favorite barbecue sauce. And of course, you can use any sauce you like. We're going to go top side down. Now we're going to wrap it up nice and tight, and what that does is it keeps the juices inside of the foil and it kind of steams it a little bit so that it's nice and moist.
Cool, we are all wrapped up. This is going to go back into the smoker for another two hours or so until it hits an internal temperature of 200° this time.
Okay, so this just came out of the smoker. We unwrapped it, and now look at that! That has got a beautiful shine, a beautiful crust. I think we have some unbelievable ribs on our hands. So these ribs look perfect, and now we're going to cut them up so we can enjoy them.
When I like to cut ribs, a decisive cut is always better than a sawing method. And if you don't really know where to cut it, you can always flip them over and kind of look at where the bones are in the back and just make sure you're cutting right between them. Now that is just a good-looking rib. I cannot wait to eat these!"
