- Are we talking short rib?
- No, we're talking dino rib.
- That's a long rib!
- It's a big rib.
Today on Prime Time, we're smoking ribs.
We're sous-viding ribs.
We're gonna see which one's better.
Prime Time!
Dino rib is a whole short rib,
so the entire bone, cooked whole.
So we're gonna try it two ways.
We're gonna do smoked.
- [Brent] Classic!
- And then Brent has this wild hair up his ass
to do one sous vide and grilled.
- Not everybody has a smoker.
We're gonna try one sous vide,
see whether that long cooking process
and then just throwing it on the grill
achieves the same effect as a long smoke.
- I'm skeptical,
'cause I don't really like sous vide anything,
but I'm willing to try anything.
- Anything?
- Anything.
I'm an open book.
- I think it's gonna be a really consistent way
to get a really great product.
I don't think it's gonna be quite as good
as the smoked product.
Short ribs are short ribs.
They're super flavorful.
So if we lose just a little bit of flavor,
I'm maybe willing to take that compromise.
- The base for short ribs is pretty high.
Short ribs are always gonna be good.
- We have a whole rib section here.
We have the rib steaks.
This is an entire prime rib
that we would cut into rib eye steaks.
This is the whole short rib section.
- If you're gonna be looking to do
something like this at home,
the easiest way is to find the closest
whole-animal butcher shop.
Some grocery stores also get whole animal in.
It's not too hard.
It's pretty much just ask them
to not cut it into the small cross-cut rib.
We're doing the whole long piece.
So it's actually less work
for your butcher to sell you the whole thing
rather than cutting it into pieces.
They should be pretty happy to sell it to you.
- I think it's awesome, 'cause it's something you can share.
- I kind of like dino ribs,
just because you never get to see them.
It's a good crowd-pleaser.
It's a cheap, good crowd-pleaser.
'Cause you're paying short rib price
for something that's gonna be
a dramatic centerpiece to a grill-out, right?
(saw scraping)
♪ Just sawing a bone on a short rib plate ♪
Satisfying sound alert!
(bone cracks)
Ah, that's the stuff!
Take a nice, sharp knife...
Clean lines, everybody, clean lines.
- Clean lines.
Cool!
- And for this video, screw this guy.
That's another video. - Throw it in the trash!
- Yup.
And there you have it.
We cut off these three,
because they tend to be a little bit more puny,
a little bit fattier more than meaty.
'Cause you have a couple of knives next to you,
you wanna just cut those four,
and then we'll take these for trim?
- [Ben] Ooh, papa bear!
- All right, so we're just gonna season 'em,
just salt and pepper.
- And you wanna season all sides, obvi.
We're not doing it today, but I like to season them
about 12 to 24 hours ahead of time.
We'll sous vide two of them at 160.
We'll smoke two of them at 160.
Same amount of time,
so that way we will have a very good idea
of which ones we actually like better.
- This is pretty much science.
- It's pretty much like we just invented science.
- You're welcome, world.
- And, it's--
- [Both] Been 16 hours!
- Exactly! - Here we go.
Wow. - Wow.
Great 16-hour nap.
- I feel so much better!
- Whoo! - Wow.
Sleep really makes a difference, you know?
- Yeah, you look great.
- Thanks.
- All right, let's pull this.
♪ Sous vide is so terribly uninteresting ♪
♪ It really takes the fun out of cooking ♪
- There we are, our lightly-boiled meat.
There's nothing more satisfying.
- [Ben] Rendered off a decent amount of fat.
- [Brent] Decent amount of fat, yeah.
I mean, definitely feels still steak-y.
I don't think it's super tender.
- [Ben] Push 'em back, yeah.
- [Brent] Yeah.
- So far, I'd say 16 hours at 160
really worked out for getting the texture we want.
- [Brent] Let this cool, relax, fire the grill, grill it.
- [Ben] We'll be there.
- [Brent] Okay.
- [Both] Cool.
- We just need to get a good sear.
Our flame's pretty high.
Get a little bit of flavor, hopefully, from the grill,
and that ought to be that.
So you can see, we're already getting it pretty dark.
What do you think, B?
- I think this looks awesome!
Very cool that it's pulling back from the bone.
Still has a nice steak-y texture here.
I am hopefully optimistic about our experiment here.
- Wait, you hope to be optimistic at some point,
or you're hopeful - No, I said I'm
hopefully optimistic. - and optimistic?
- Like, hopefully, I'm optimistic at some point in my life.
- I think they look really, really good.
Take some, take the ones out of the smoker?
- Yeah, let's do it.
- All right.
Oh, papa bear!
(whistles)
- This looks awesome.
I mean, it's definitely not pulling back as much as this is,
but I feel like the texture is gonna be pretty great.
- Let's start sous vide.
- Let's do it!
- [Ben] Woo-hoo!
- [Brent] It looks great!
- [Ben] Yeah, I like where the fat-to-meat ratio
is on this guy.
- [Brent] I mean, look at that.
It maintained its fat.
That's good.
Looks awesome.
It looks like a perfectly-cooked deckle.
- [Ben] You used to call me your perfectly-cooked deckle.
Well, not anymore.
What?
That's looking promising.
Got good color. - Oh man.
- [Ben] That fat hasn't rendered out through the muscle.
- Fat is fully rendered, but still intact.
That is beautiful!
I mean, this looks great!
See how it tastes? - Yeah.
- Cool.
I'm not mad!
- It's a little bit closer to braised than steak
than I was hoping for,
but the fat breaks down really, really nice.
I feel like I already know the flavor on the smoked
is gonna be better and more full and beefy,
like the way I would expect it to be.
It does feel kinda light.
- I'd say the shining aspect of this is the texture.
It's very tender, but does leave something lacking,
as far as the smokiness.
- It's like something to be desired.
- Yeah.
- [Ben] You can just tell from pinching it
that it just kinda, it spreads,
but then it kinda pulls itself back together.
- Let's try the smoked one.
- All right.
I'm gonna stick with the larger outer muscle on that too.
- [Brent] Great.
- Whoa! - Oh!
- [Ben] Okay!
A little bit more rendered out.
- Oh man, even just licking your fingertips
after touching it has a ton of smoke!
- [Ben] You can hear there's a little bit more texture.
- Also, really impressive how this still kept
almost a medium-rare hue to it,
where the sous vide kinda greyed out a little bit.
This is really beautiful and still super tender.
It looks like a medium rare steak.
- From a short rib, that's the stuff.
- Buy a smoker.
This is phenomenal.
- I always kind of felt, it's like, well,
the smoked fat game, you can't really mess with,
smoked fat is just amazing,
but I really thought the texture on the sous vide was like,
well, it's not gonna beat the flavor of the smoked,
but maybe it can beat, it'll probably beat the texture.
But I like the texture on this better too.
- There is more texture to it,
there's more chew to it, which I really like.
- I like that too.
- I gotta say, this is good.
- That's good.
- The sous vide was good.
If we had to cook a hundred of them,
I'd probably say, "Let's do this."
Just so they all come out--
- Exactly the same. - Exactly the same,
super, super even.
But small scale, with a little bit more time,
you really can't beat smokin' it,
all the way, all the way through.
- The hits are the hits for a reason.