2For66

Cook Date: May 1, 2025

Where Have I Been.

You may be wondering where I’ve been (or maybe you haven’t). My last post, on chili dogs, was five months ago. What happened? For Christmas our kids (sons, daughters-in-law, and grandkids) got us StoryWorth subscriptions for the year. If you are like me – oldish and have lost a parent ( or both, or more) – you find yourself wondering what your parents’ lives were like: what did they do before we kids came along? What do they think about various subjects. But we can’t ask anymore. StoryWorth tries to fill that gap. Each week Carla and I get separate questions to write about. At the end of the year there will be 52 stories that kids and grandkids can look back on and understand who these old people in their lives are/were. At the end, the stories and accompanying pictures will be compiled into a book.

Here are some questions

• What is one of your earliest childhood memories
• What’s a small decision you made that need up having a big impact on your life
• How would you describe your grandparents
• What was your mom (dad) like when you were a child

I have to confess that sometimes I don’t answer the question directly, I use it as a jumping off point to talk about something adjacent to the question. For example, this week’s question is “If this is the last thing you wrote, what words of wisdom would you share.” That sounds a little “Big Question” to me; so I’m going to write about a prayer I learned (from “The Pitt”, a TV show actually) which is “I love you; I’m sorry. I forgive you. Thank you.” I think that is wonderful way to say goodbye to someone.

As you can imagine, all of my writing time and energy have gone into that project. There are likely other services so I won’t recommend StoryWorth since I have nothing to compare to; but it works for us. I think it is a great idea for a gift.

Over the past few months I’ve considered using some of the stories as blog posts but I can’t decide if they may be too personal to be of interest to others. What do you think? Leave a comment to let me know.

Four Hour Ribs

A week or so my friend Tom reached out to me and asked what is up – he’s seen my Chili Dog post (last thing I wrote about) for almost half a year and would like something new. So, I’m putting aside my StoryWorth question this week to write about smoking some pork ribs on a beautiful early May day.

Ask 10 people how they like their ribs and nine will say “fall off the bone”. I know how to cook ribs like that and I’m not a fan. To get “fall off the bone” ribs, use the 3-2-1 method. Cook on low heat (225°) for three hours; wrap in aluminum foil with some liquid and cook (steam) for another two hours; remove from the foil, dab on some BBQ sauce and finish unwrapped for one hour. This method will get you more that fall off the bone ribs; they may not even make it to the plate with the meat attached to the ribs at all. Two hour of steaming the ribs is just too, too much.

I want my bite of rib meat to come cleanly off the bone with a little bit of a tug. And it would be a big bonus if I don’t want to spend all day cooking. So, looked up some ideas on YouTube. I found it fascinating that the zeitgeist of rib cooking has subtly changed in my absence. For example, every cook I watched featured the person telling us to compress the ribs by bunching the rack of ribs by pushing on the top and bottom of the ribs just a bit. I do not remember that bit of advice. A technical forensic analyst could probably find where that started. Four hour ribs is now a popular method; it calls for cooking them at 275° instead of 225°. I’ve notched up my temps over the years; in this 2023 post you can see I cooked at 265°. That is a great post to cover the rub and the sauce I made and which I don’t have pictures or details of here.

My plan was:

• Cook on low temp for 30 minutes to generate a lot of smoke
• Cook at 275° for 2 hours, spritzing with a bit of liquid every 30 minutes
• Wrap with butter, honey, and a special BBQ glaze) for 1 hour
• Unwrap, brush on some sauce, and let the sauce set for 15 minutes at 275°
• Take off heat and rest for 15 minutes

Cook time: 4 hours. Notice: that is the active cooking time. The start to end time is definitely longer – as you’ll see.

I also took the opportunity to taste test pork loin ribs (AKA Baby Back ribs) and St Louis Cut ribs; so I smoked one rack of each. At 7:00 AM I took the ribs out of their wrapping, dabbed them dry, trimmed, then, and liberally sprinkled them with kosher salt then stashed them uncovered back in the refrigerator to dry brine a few hours. Then I went out to breakfast with a couple of buddies.

When I got home I added the rub ( but it’s not really a “rub”; don’t rub, sprinkle and pat). The rub has no salt in it since the ribs get enough in the dry brine.

The ribs rest on the counter to approach room temperature as I start the smoker and let it come up to temp. Then add the ribs. Love that smoke! The St Louis Cut is on the left and pork loin back rib on the right. I included the larger trimmed pieces just because.

Tha MAK grill does its thing

Want the details of the cook? Here is my cooking log. You can see I varied a little bit.

Let’s talk about the wrapping phase. I put three pats of butter, a drizzle of honey, and a squirt of BBQ glaze on a large piece aluminum foil, then added the ribs meat side down onto the foil and finished with a bit more honey and glaze on the bone side. Then carefully wrap – we don’t want those ribs to puncture the foil) and put back on the grill meat side down. I actually double wrap my ribs to protect against holes in the foil allowing all the goodness to drip out onto the grill.

Truth be told, I’ve resisted adding butter and sweetness at this point of the cook. I used to only add a bit of apple juice cut with water or apple cider vinegar; but now I’ve included the fat and sweetness I’m a convert. It’s pretty clear that adding a little fat, a little liquid, and a small taste boost is a bit help. I used to think it was cheating, but why should I think that? I want to put a tasty product on the table; if the fat and sweet helps, then let’s go for it. It’s not like ribs are health food. Even then I cringe a bit at using butter; next time I’ll use a bit of good lard instead. Pork with pork.

The glaze is a great idea; it’s much thinner that brushing on thick BBQ sauce. I used this recipe I found on ProQ Smokers. It is similar to (identical?) to this glaze that Heath Riles uses in this YouTube.

• 1 cup cola
• 1 cup ketchup
• 4 Tbsp Sugar (I used turbinado style)
• 4 Tbsp Honey
• 2 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
• ½ tsp Chili Powder

No wonder it’s good; it has a lot of sugar. You are supposed to simmer it to meld the flavors; I just shook it real hard..

After four hours and five minutes I had this

Nice pull back from the bone in the St Louis rack.

Check out the beautiful smoke ring on the two racks.

and the St Louis cut

We had the grandsons over and we all used more of the glaze instead of BBQ sauce. Who knew sugar makes things taste good? Lesson learned.

Take aways:

• They were tender, juicy, and delicious! The meat came cleanly off the bone with the perfect amount of tug .
• Back Loin and St Louis ribs cooked in the same amount of time. Many recipes call for more time for the St Louis ribs
• Third, with all that sugar they had better be good.
• This was supposed to be a taste test to see which cut of ribs is better. No verdict.

Personally, I like the St Louis cut better; it is usually a bit meatier than the Back Loin ribs. And that bit of pork loin on them is so lean that, in my mind, distracts from the “ribbiness” (if you know what I mean). But tell folks you are cooking “Baby Back Ribs” and you will draw a crowd.

If you want to watch more YouTube videos demonstrating the 4 hour method try out one of more of these (each link opens in a new tab)

• Mad Moose BBQ
• Heath Riles – also linked above for the glaze.
• Dawgfatha’s BBQ – my favorite person on the list. I’ve subscribed.
• Grilling with Dad

Rating: ★★★★ 4 Stars. This is my new method for cooking ribs.