You're watching barbeque with franklin Im Aaron and today we're going to
cook some pork spare ribs make a rub
wrap em sauce em and then eat em
it's rib time
we're gonna start off by making a rub
for these pork spare ribs
one empty cup
this is what i'm going to use to mix
as usual
salt pepper of course is the base for anything awesome in my book
going to start off with
about that much black pepper
about half that amount of salt
my general ratio for
pepper to salt
for pork ribs is two parts black pepper to one part salt
they're really thin and their really easy to over salt that's kind of the
basic thing and this is what we do here at the restaurant
but salt and pepper is getting a little boring so we are going to throw some other stuff in there
a little bit of chili powder not too much
put a little bit of garlic powder if you do a onion powder or garlic powder you're going to want to do more of a granulated
kind of thing
if they're really powdery it's gonna settle and its going to clump kinda oddly i might
even take a little bit
so just sprinkle a little bit of that for some savory spices
and a little bit of onion powder not
too much
and for color not so much for flavor im going to add some paprika
paprika is pretty standard for rib rubs
it'll give kind of a nice red color to it
real simple kinda mix it up im only doing one rack of ribs so im not making much
rub here
but what i am going to do
im going to pour it in a shaker
get the rub on the ribs
really really even
unlike brisket and other things
where you can just kinda throw the rub on there
put it on the smoker
there's not as much smoke that goes on a rack of ribs
so i think it's a little more important to have a real even coat so you can see
just pepper it doesn't look kinda splotchy you dont want it too heavy on the
thin side you don't want it to light on the thick side and that's why i'm using a shaker
just to keep it kind of
lookin pretty
now we've got our
dry rib rub made
we're going to trim some ribs
so what you're looking for when you go the grocery store
is you're looking for pork spare ribs
not saint louis cut and not baby backs
baby backs come from a different part of the pig
little leaner meat and spare ribs typically have a lot more fat
they're going to be a lot more moist they're going to have a lot more flavor a full spare
has the breast bone attached right here
so we're going to cut that off here in a second
it's got anywhere between eleven to fourteen bones you can normally count on
twelve and it's not trimmed if you look around here it's just it's got the bones
and that it's got the cartilage and stuff in there
it's not trimmed it's got the skirt on it
and it's got kind of a tip right there what you're looking for
ideally is something that has a lot of fat
and you dont want it to look too lean but you want to be able to see some fat right there
that kind of go with the grain
that's going to be a lot of flavor it's going to
render more moist ribs hopefully it won't dry out quite as quick
if you'll notice here that this end is really thick if i was doing a competition
my competition ribs would come from right here because those are the thick ones and they
have the straightest bones but we're not doing competition we're going to eat this stuff
so we're going to cook the whole thing
and the knife i like to use is a ten inch actually its a nine and a half inch
just chefs knife
you're gonna be hacking through some bones and stuff so if you have a really nice
delicate knife that's kinda thin you probably don't want to use it you can use a
cleaver you could use a debba which is a japanese
butcher knife that shaped like a chef's knife
i use them
pretty often but they they get kinda heavy when you're doing sixty of these things
so i like to have a lightweight one with a thick blade lets get to trimming
first thing we're going to do is square this up
and there's kind of a baby little rib right there its
probably gonna fall out while we are cooking it and it's probably gonna burn up anyway
so im going to put my knuckles right there
you're gonna lose it regardless i kinda flip it around like that you can slide your
knife a little bit and it'll hit something right there gonna cut like that
kinda go through
and there is cartledge right there
if you feel something that's pretty crunchy there are little pieces of bones
that go through there
if you hit something just kinda go a little farther in until the coast is
clear
get rid of that or you could save it to
use it for uh... beans or if you wanna make a pork or something
you can certainly do that
and this is
what they kind of call a kansas city cut and that's a full spare
minus the breast bone
what i normally do
is i just box off a little bit
i get all the rough edges off because you kinda figure if something is sticking out
it's going to burn any way
kinda hit the skirt
and the reason why i cut this off this is a great piece of meat if you want to use
it for somethin great
i normally dont if you dont cut it off
when it heats up its going to pull up anyways
so you'll have rub you'll have smokey
color all over this part and then you'll have a bald patch right there
you don't really want that
grab that point and flip it around
we've got this
and if you like bacon or anything this is where the pork belly is the pork belly is
just the fatty back side of this
so this meat's pretty good right here it's got a lot of fat
but i always trim that off
could've been a snack
but it's not
trim that off because after it's cooked
when
say if i'm having a lunch service and i'm cutting these things
if i left that piece of meat on there the fat woiuld cook out from between the two
pieces of meat and they would just slide right off on the board
and that's not very attractive
and it's not going to have any bark on it
thing is we like bark
trim it off a little bit
so while you're doing all of this got it kinda trimmed run
your hands across the bones right there a lot of times
if you're getting mass-produced ribs
from various companies or even smaller companies
when they run these things through a saw they will go too fast and chip the
bones
sometime
now we've got our pork spare ribs trimmed up got breast bone off got it
trimmed up nicely
skirts trimmed back
little piece of fat is cut off the back we're going to pull off the membrane here at the barbeque place
i dont pull off the membranes but most people do
they definitely turn out better ribs and if you know we got a couple racks you might as well
pull them off
and what the membrane is its exactly a membrane
it's a membrane
goes right here
its going to be on the inside of the rack of ribs kinda protects the
the muscles from the organs and kinda
the stuff we're not gonna cook
to get that off
take a little knife
kinda get under there a little bit
and kinda peel it up just a little bit
tipically butter knives work really good
if you have a butter knife
i'm right handed so im going to
flip it around that way
it gets really really slippery so grab you some paper towels
that'll help you grip it
kinda go to town
hopefully it will come off in one big strip if you're lucky
oh i like getting lucky
it's a pretty nice looking rack of pork ribs
got the breast bone off the skirt off the membrane pulled off
unfortunately we've got a few bones poking through right here we've got a little term for that
its called shiners what shiner typically refers to the other side but in this case its this side
not much you can do about it just going to have to kinda
deal with it
it's an imperfect meat
well barbeque is an imperfect thing
to cook anyway
i think we are ready to put a rub on
so we've got our rub made
going to open that up just a little bit
i always like using a shaker for ribs instead of using a cup or like a hand and
throwing it on
i think it's a lot more important to have a nice presentation with pork ribs
because it's more delicate meat
but we need something to make the rub stick
i like to use olive oil
normally i use a squirt bottle
just put a little bit on there
useing olive oil is pretty awesome for steaks or really any kind of meat
if you're going to grill somethin
it's really a pretty great way to
start off anything
i think it's great for tri tip
kinda rub it down just a little bit
flip it over get the other side
not too much
just enough to make the rub stick
that's kind of the thing with brisket
i don't do anything like this
because there's so much blood that comes with the brisket it makes the rub stick anyway
the ribs dont really necessarily have a whole lot of blood they don't really
have a whole lot going on anyway so we got to add some stuff to it
i like to do
the meat side first
if you've got granules that are of different size you want to keep it moving
all the time so something doesnt settle to the bottom and
something doesnt end up too salty
salt normally settles towards the bottom so i put the holes up top
when i'm holding it
so kinda sprinkle it on there
and i like to look at a lot of pepper
i think that looks pretty good if you'll notice that its really even there's no
splotchiness i didn't get too much here i didn't get too little here
i think it's pretty good
if you've got ribs that are really really thin be careful with the salt cuz
it
doesn't take much salt to get it in there
delicately flip it over
for this side and it's just me being a little OCD perhaps
but i typically do the rub that way
so if there is a streak it's actually going
parallel to the bones
doesn't really make any sense
or mean anything
so there you go
we'll put this puppy on