What's up you guys? It's Susie from HeyGrillHey.com and
today I'm taking you on a little backyard barbecue
experimental adventure. We're going to be smoking up some
orange style spare ribs. I've never made this recipe before
but I think it's going to be delicious and I think you guys
are going to enjoy it also if it turns out which I think it
will. Let's do it.
Alright, I'm cooking three racks of Saint Louis style
spare ribs today. We're going to be doing a modified
321 method If you're not familiar with the 321 method
for ribs, it's three hours of smoke, two hours in a braise
and the last hour back on the smoker covered in sauce and
we're going to bring orange flavor into every layer of that
cooking process today. We got our smoker set up at 225
degrees. We're actually run orange wood in the smoker.
Orange wood is kind of actually the inspiration behind the
recipe. We're going to be brazing in a soy and orange
mixture. We're going to be glazing at the end with panda
express like Chinese food style orange glaze. So, it's going to
be Asian inspired but very much American barbecue methods and I
think it's going to be awesome. So, let's prep our ribs. These
guys are well marbled and fatty and beautiful which is exactly
what we're looking for. I'm just going to flip over and
remove the membrane off of the back of each of these ribs.
During the cooking process, it tends to get a little bit
papery and I don't love that. Some people like to leave the
membrane on. If that is you, that is fine. I just recommend
scoring it a little bit with a knife.
Now, I just get kind of under the membrane with my finger, a
gloved finger and then, lift and pull away from the bones.
Sometimes, it's easier. If you have a paper towel, gives you a
little bit more grip. It's not quite as slippery and then,
just lift away and pull. If it does happen to come apart in
pieces, that's totally fine. Just get back after it. If you
need a little bit of help, you can use the end of a butter
knife to separate the membrane from the bones initially.
Gorgeous. That membrane is insane. Insane is the membrane.
No diggity. Alright, we're just going to season both sides of
our ribs with the Hey Grill Hey Sweet Rub. I have the recipe on
my website or on my app or you can buy a bottle if you want it
premade or you can use your very, very favorite barbecue
seasoning. I think this will just give us a really nice
color base as well as kind of that sweet and savory flavor
profile right as that base layer of flavor.
Flip 'em over, get both sides.
Done. Like I said, I think this is going to be a great flavor
profile but also look at the color. If we're going for that
like shiny reddish orange that you typically see in an orange
glazed chicken for example, I think the paprika in here will
give us a great like pop from underneath. Now, these are
going to go on the smoker, 225 degrees for three hours and I
am actually going to rotate these during the next step
because I don't have enough room on my smoker for all three
side by side so we're going to stack em up on the racks. So, I
said, we've got chunks of orange wood rolling in our
smoker today but if you don't have orange wood at home, I
think cherry or apple would be a really, really nice option
here. I think fruity is your best choice to compliment what
we've got going on later and we'll be back in three hours to
wrap this up with a soy orange brown sugar braise.
Alright, our ribs have been on the smoker for three hours.
That means it's time for our brazing section of our rib
cook. I'm going to make a really simple brazing liquid
that's hopefully going to reinforce all the flavors in
our glaze later. I've got a/ 2 a cup of orange juice. I'm
going to add in a/ 2 a cup of dark brown sugar and a/ 4 cup
of low sodium soy sauce.
I was hoping it would be slower than that.
Now, because I'm doing spare ribs, I'm going to give these
the full three-hour smoke at 225, two-hour braids at 225,
but if I were doing baby back ribs, I would want to cut the
time back here quite a bit. I usually do 3-11 if I'm smoking
baby back ribs. Alright, I'm going to tear off three long
sheets of extra wide heavy-duty foil.
And grab rack number one off of the smoker. This is going to go
meat side down onto the top layer of foil. Fold up the ends
and the edges to make a little boat. And then pour in a third
of my brazing liquid.
Seal it up nice and tight, get it back on the smoker, and
repeat with the remaining two racks of ribs.
Steady Alright, lids closed 225 for two more hours and in a
little bit, we're going to come back and make the glaze before
the ribs are ready to be sauced. Our ribs are almost at
that two-hour in the braze mark which means it's time to make
the orange glaze because we're going to be saucing them next.
This is a really quick sauce to put together. I make it pretty
often for my kids because they love orange chicken so I think
they're going to love the orange ribs. We got a medium
skillet. We're going to turn it over medium high heat and then
we're going to cook our aromatics. Yeah. Alright, start
with a tablespoon of sesame oil and let that until the oil
starts to shimmer on the top. Okay. To our sesame oil, I'm
going to add in 1/ 2 a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. If you
want your spicier, you can actually do a full teaspoon. It
will be pretty spicy by Yummy. A tablespoon of minced garlic
and 1/ 2 a teaspoon of minced ginger. Bloop.
Who is that smell? That's a good smell. We really only need
to cook this for about a minute or two until it becomes really,
really fragrant and the garlic just barely starts to brown.
And we're just going to go in with the rest of our
ingredients pretty quickly. We've got a/ 4 cup of white
vinegar, a/ 4 cup of orange juice. It's about the juice of
one orange and a tablespoon of orange zest. Again, this is the
zest from about one orange. Two tablespoons of soy sauce, and
then a quarter cup each of white sugar and brown sugar. Oh
it smells so good. Now, this is loaded with all of that orange
chicken flavor that you're used to but it's not quite the right
consistency for basting on our ribs. So, we're going to add in
a slurry of two tablespoons of water, two tablespoons of
cornstarch. Just mix it until you form a nice little paste
and then pour it into our sauce. We're just going to drop
the heat down so it's not boiling and then stir in our
cornstarch slurry, turn the heat back up, bring it up to a
boil, and it should be the perfect consistency for glazing
on our ribs.
Okay, it is time to glaze our ribs. They've been smoking for
two hours. So, we're going to carefully remove them from the
smoker and what we should see is a little bit of extra liquid
in the foil from the time that it was in the braise and you
can also see our ribs have some really nice pullback from the
bone which is a great indicator to me of tenderness and the
doneness that we're looking for. I'm actually going to
transfer about a half a cup of from this first rack of ribs
into our glazing liquid. It's going to give us the most
delightful sheen and shine when we glaze it back on the ribs. I
actually love doing this when I'm making ribs and using
barbecue sauce also. It's a great hack for ultra shiny
ribs. Okay, I'm just going to carefully remove the ribs from
the foil. Discard the foil and the rest of the liquid and get
these ribs back on the smoker bone side down so we can glaze
the top.
Ribs are all out of the foil. I'm going to hit them with our
orange glaze and now, typically, like I said 321 we
would put them back on for an additional hour but judging by
the doneness on these ribs when I pulled them out of the foil,
I don't think they're going to need a full hour. So, I might
give them a half hour with the glaze just to get smokey and
tacky on the outside and then, I think they'll be ready to
come off and slice and eat.
Beautiful. I'm really excited about these. Close 'em up. Like
I said, maybe another half hour. I'll come check on 'em
then and I think we'll be good to go.
Alright, 30 minutes into our glazing portion of our 321
smoke, More like 3 2 1/ 2 this time and I'm just praying that
these ribs taste as good as they look because they look
amazing.
I mean, these are beautiful between the color that we were
able to get from that orange wood smoke and that red sweet
rub base we put on there and this beautiful sticky glaze
situation. I'm just, I'm so tickled pink. I think for a
ribs spearmint, they turned out pretty well. I'm just going to
hit these guys with a little bit of sesame seeds and some
thin sliced green onion because I think it will add some nice
color and some really great like texture and flavor on the
top of our ribs.
Yeah, that's pretty. Okay, I'm going to eat one now. Alright,
let's see if I can sneak a rib off of this rack at the end
right here. Gorgeous. You can see smoke ring. You can just
see the moisture in the meat itself. That is a deep smoke
ring. That's a beautiful rib right there. Now, we gotta do
the bite test, right? Because we want these to come away from
the bone but not totally fall off the bone and we want to
make sure they're smokey and juicy and suite.
Oh, a perfect bite. It's like familiar but new because we're
all used to that orange chicken flavor but to have that in a
fatty, smoky, juicy ribs. It takes that already
fantastically complex sauce to a delightfully new place and
not to toot my own horn but the cook on these ribs is pretty
much perfect. I have a feeling I have some kids that are
going to freak out over these ribs and I do have to give a
out to Taste Test Todd, the man behind the camera because I
probably wouldn't have made these if it wasn't his idea. He
was like, you know, you should do some orange wood orange
smoked orange chicken ribs. So, here we are and here you are. I
hope you guys give this recipe a try. It is new. It is
different and I'm really, really excited about it. I
think these are absolutely delicious and the recipe is one
that even though this was a test, turned out fantastic on
the first try and will definitely be hitting the
website so you guys can make them at home. We'll see you
guys next time.