3-2-1 / 2-2-1 Method for ribs
 

So again yesterday, I made back ribs on my Kamado grill. The verdict? Too salty for my wife and kids.

What are you guys using for rubs and how much should I use?

Salt is your enemy...it drives BP. Go sparingly, let the person salt it themselves if they want. Allmost all processed foods contain salt...look at the packaging.

I lightly salt everything. You can always add more.

Std base rub...granulated garlic, onion, paprika, blk pepper and Brown sugar. Then be creative with any combo of cumin, coriander, celery powder, Chinese 5 spices, cayenne, coffee, chocolate powder, mustard.

Usually one part ea of the first 5 and apx half a part ea of the discretionary spices including salt. Let meld in refer for up to a couple of days.

Experiment...

Use any rib rub recipe and smoke 3 hours, wrap in foil with squeeze Parkay and apple juice 2 hours and unwrap and finish for 1 hour.

Always turn out great.

It's very easy to over salt something on the grill, I choose to leave it up to each individual when it is on their dinner plate how much they want. I tend to hardly salt anything because of my previos CHF problems, and usually put tangy sauces on the side soi I can dip how ever much I want.

Parkay on top of the foil?

Any commercial rub I’ve tried has been way too salty. I make my own from a recipe I found online.

THIS, IMO, is phenomenal stuff:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/kansas-city-rib-rub-recipe-335915

1 ....let's eat!

Counting is hard when yer hungry :)

I halved the salt and doubled the sugar on my rib rub a few years ago.
Use Kosher or sea salt. Iodized salt ruins stuff.

Too salty for the wife and kids but I take that you liked them!
Win! More ribs for Scott.

You mispeeled "KC" tho' :)

I never use rubs, so my recommendation on the amount that you should use is zero.

I like Salt Lick rub. Not salty at all. You can go sweet too. Cover in brown sugar before smoking. A lot of the sugar will run off, so it won't be terribly sweet.

Excellent point. I use kosher salt in the rub recipe I linked.

For the foil step I sprinkled brown sugar, squeezed some honey and added a 1:1 mixture of apple juice and apple cider vinegar.

Dry rub my wife made from a recipe she found

if you wanna turn up the heat try sprinkling a pinch of cayenne in the foil when you wrap.

A word about salt...

Salts very widely in their saltiness, mainly because of different densities as a result of their differing crystal shapes. Two major brands of kosher salt, Diamond Crystal and Morton’s, vary so much that a recipe developed using Diamond Crystal salt will be ruined if you use Morton’s in the same quantity.

There’s nothing really special about kosher salt, the fact that it is “kosher” revolves around the fact that it was coarser than other salts of the time, when it was developed.

Use what you want, Vash probably has at least a half a dozen different types in his pantry, but recognize that you have to understand the differences so that you use them correctly. There’s something to be said for using one type of simple sea salt and learning it’s characteristics.

Speaking of salt....this was a killer episode of Star Trek.......

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agree.
not a fan of salt because for me a little goes a looong way.
in fact ate at local BBQ the other day. the tend to be heavy handed on the salt.
good fried chicken though. I don't eat their BBQ because its vinegar based.:mad:
that place is a heart attack waiting to happen. too much salt and everything is fried.

We use salt lick also.

Salt can also help retain moisture if it is done ahead of time properly. It does not take much.*

*Alton Brown.

I made ribs this past weekend. I put the ribs in a foil pan with beer/bourbon and brown sugar and left in the refrigerator overnight.
When cooking (gas bbq) I put a small amount of seasoning and cooked at 200 degrees flipping every 5-7 minutes. Near the end I put sauce on them, they came out pretty good.

I like the looks of this--plan to try it tomorrow. Thanks!

Hope it works well for you. I love it.

Here is my tried and true ribs recipe.

1. Pressure cook ribs in a broth. 2 hours at high pressure, or if using a regular pot, 8 hours simmering. Broth can be water with bullion, whatever, enough to cover ribs. Red wine, dark beer, other flavor enhancers are optional. You want a lot of liquid when the juices from the ribs are added.
2. Drain and save liquid, let ribs cool, move to refrigerator and chill overnight. This lets the gelatin set up so the ribs won't fall apart during the next step.
3. Reduce the liquid by 75% or more. You want it to be sauce consistency, thick enough to coat a spoon but not as thick as gravy.
4. Remove ribs from refrigerator. Heat a pot of oil to 375F and deep fry the ribs in batches, until medium brown.
5. Heat a wok or large pan. Working in batches, toss and saute the ribs in the sauce. You can doctor the sauce up before this, but it's not necessary.
6. Serve right away

I recently did 20 lb of pork spare ribs using a variant of this recipe. I bagged the ribs with a homemade rub, and sous vided for 24 hours at 160 F. Drained the liquid and reduced it. Finished the ribs on the grill, moved to a serving platter, and poured the reduced liquid over. You could deep fry instead of grill. The rub was salt, pepper, various dry herbs, onion and garlic powder, cayenne powder.

The basic principle is long cooking in tasty liquid, then high heat to brown and crust, finish with a sauce.

Guys - thank you.

I had some of the left overs (there were lots) last night when I got home. They seemed way less salty.

I’m going to try Tabby’s suggestion (thank you).

One little trick I used and thought worked quite well is using a 16ga. needle and a 60ml syringe to inject the apple juice into the already wrapped ribs. The benefits of raising beef, you have vet supplies like this on hand...

The study that drove the FDA to push sodium reduction was found to have misplaced a decimal point. The government figured they would use it anyway to push lower sodium diets. Most studies since have found in some people it can cause hypertension. They have also found that in most people that a low sodium diet might decrease your systolic by a point or two at most.

There is a good article on Scientific American, or if you don't trust them Time also had a similar article.