Year of the Pig

Last weekend was my birthday. Whats 34? That’s a throwaway birthday, but if nothing else, a good day for some ribs. We had some people over to play card games–Canasta, if you can believe that. The day before I bought 4 racks of spare ribs from the supermarket. I trimmed them up, realizing that I have gotten quite a bit better at the trimming, although it is still a little time consuming. I took off the remaining membrane, and some of the pockets of fat. Then when the rain stopped on Saturday afternoon and I was ready to smoke, I took the ribs and brined them in a light salt solution with a ratio of 1/4 cup of salt to 1 quart of water, for 30 minutes. I had read that this would help keep them moist so I thought it was worth a try.

I seasoned the racks based on two recipes from Paul Kirks’ “Championship Barbecue” book, which I like very much. I seasoned two racks with a thick coat of store bought saltless Lemon Pepper, and for the other two racks I chopped up about a tablespoon fresh rosemary and a tablespoon of thyme and ground them together with a head of pressed garlic using a mortar and pestle, til it was a thick garlicly paste. I rubbed the garlic mixture onto the racks. Since it didn’t coat the ribs like the rubs I usually use, I was afraid it wasn’t gonna really impart much flavor. I did my best to really rub the paste into the ribs, and it turns out that the flavor took very well.

I smoked the ribs all told for about five hours, using hickory chunks and some bourbon barrel oak chips. The temperature built up slow, but stayed around 225. About halfway through I turned them over in the rack, and basted them by rubbing butter on them, the more fat the better right?! Here is a picture of them at the halfway point:

After the halfway mark, whenever I opened the smoker (every 30 min or so) I would put a little smear of butter along the top of the racks and I would also spritz them with apple juice to keep them moist.

When the rib meat had drawn back off the tip of the bone by a good quarter inch or so it was time to take them off. I let them sit for about ten minutes and they looked wonderful:

I sliced them up and placed them on a platter to serve. Both recipes proved to be delicious and they were a big hit with everyone, but I especially liked the potent and simple flavor of the garlic and herbs ribs. To be honest, I found them to be the best ribs I had ever made. I wonder if the brining or the butter-basting made the difference, or something else, but I am telling you, these ribs were delicious. I was very happy with the result. These were the best birthday present I could ask for.

As for the ribulation, including that night an subsequent leftovers (yum) I ate ten delicious ribs, bringing the Year of the Pig count to a respectable 133 ribs. And counting. Thank you piggie!

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My diet over the last couple months has had no shortage of pork, but it has been sadly short on ribs. I am trying to make up for that this week.

Above is a crappy photo of meat. Sorry about that. The meat in question however is from the Brooklyn barbecue restaurant, Fette Sau. I have already mentioned this place in several posts, including Squidocto’s preview-review about it, but I had yet to try it for myself…until last weekend!

I arrived in Willimsburg around 10 pm not having had a bite to eat since lunch, and headed straight to Fette Sau. The place was hopping with Saturday night Williamsburg hipster types, and a hoofed it right through them to the counter and ordered up a rack of the baby back ribs which are served by the pound and cost around $25. The friendly young woman dropped my rack on the tray and I promptly picked it up and sat it down on one of the long tables, next to the not-that-funny-LCD-screen fireplace. I sat down excitedly and purposefully with my rack of ribs, ready to thoroughly enjoy them.

I planned to take my time with these ribs and savor them. The first bite was promising. They had a nice texture and solid smoky flavor. I have to say, however, I was disappointed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they are tasty and enjoyable, but nothing to blow your mind. Also, the meat was a little dry and bland compared to say, Texas Hill Country, who’s ribs will blow your mind. Anyway, I got a little bored with these ribs about halfway through the rack, but nevertheless they made a very satisfying tasty meal for a man in desperate need of some ribs. To be fair, I will definitely come back and give the ribs another try. A trip to Fette Sau is certainly still a good time, the place itself has a real nice fun and low-key atmosphere that I dug.

Now, did someone mention Texas Hill Country? Oh yeah, that was me! I made it out to Texas Hill Country again last night, excited to relive my previous experiences with their wonderful pork spareribs. Could it be that they are really as good as I remember? For that I would be willing to put up with their zoo of Manhattanite customers and their inane seating methods, which are frankly just plain irritating. My friend Jay was playing with a Patsy Cline tribute band called the Poor Man’s Roses in the downstairs level (which typically has a good line up of bands), and my friend Ben and I saddled up to the bar to enjoy some ribs, some rye whisky and some music. The band was very good; they do an excellent job of reproducing the sweet, mellow, soulful music of Patsy Cline. As it got later, the crowd began to thin out and we moved over to a table to watch the band, and they even dedicated a nice version of Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon of Kentucky to yours truly, which was very nice, thanks. So, were the ribs as good as I remembered?? Yes, every bit and more so. God bless Texas Hill Country!

Rock on, I finally get to ribulate again! I think I left off at 108 ribs. Now I add 12 from Fette Sau and 3 from Texas Hill Country, which oddly enough, is about an equivalent amount of meat, bringing the grand total for the Year of the Pig to 123. Thank you piggies one and all, and may your ribs find their way to Texas Hill Country!

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This past Monday, I was getting ready to head out to M Shanghai’s regular monthly gig (every first Monday of the month) at the Rodeo bar, when I checked my email and found that our gig had been cancelled. The Rodeo bar has been having some kind of trouble with a city inspector, and so they had to shut down that night. I read on in my email and found out that the same guy that books the Rodeo Bar also books the new barbecue restaurant that I have been dying to try, Texas Hill Country, and he offered to let us have our show there instead, as long as we “promised not to defect” from the Rodeo bar. I was very excited, and promptly headed out the door, to make sure I got some time before the gig to check out the food, which I have heard very good things about.

In case you haven’t heard, the long awaited Texas Hill Country opened a few weeks ago in New York City, conveniently located for me, only a couple of blocks from the PATH station in Chelsea, on 26th Street. The idea of this place is to duplicate a Lockheart Texas Style barbecue joint in Manhattan. It seems they have spared no expense, even trucking up loads of native Post Oak, which only grows in Texas, for smoking. The space itself lookes great, and still has a nice relaxed atmosphere. The downstairs area, where they have music is a nice big venue filled with long wooden tables, and I thought the sound in the room was quite good too.

I was most excited to learn that Hill Country feeds the bands and picks up all the beer, which is sadly not always the case in New York. They handed me a meal card, which you can take to individul stations or to the bar. You order what you want and they mark it on the card, and you pay when you leave. It seems like their system can get kind of chaotic when they are busy, especially with the seating, but I had no problem. I got in line for the barbecue, which is all served by the pound. The menu includes Brisket, Beef Shoulder, Prime Rib, Beef Ribs, Pork Spare Ribs, Pork Chops, Kreuz Sausage (pronounced “krites”), Market Chicken, and Game Hen. It all looked good I must say, but I ended up sampling the Moist Brisket, the Pork Spare Ribs, the Kreuz Sausage, the Beef Ribs, the Coleslaw, the Deviled Eggs, Baked Beans, and Potato Salad. I was impressed with everything I tasted, except for the Beef rib, which was completely dry and frankly terrible. I have to assume it was a fluke based on the quality of everything else. If it wasn’t free, I would have taken it back for sure. Everything else I had was excellent and above par.

As for the Spare Ribs, absolutely delicious: juicy and firm, smoky with a spicy, chewy exterior and a very attractive red smoke ring all around the meat. They were unreal, and come highly recommended! It may not be pork, but for the record, the brisket and sides were all delicious. I liked the coleslaw very much, and all of the other sides that I didn’t try looked really good too. There is a lot more on the menu I want to try, and I will be back, trust me. Probably many times.

A word about sauce: Don’t drown your food. Their bottled sauce is even called “If You Gotta Have It.” I stuck my finger in some of it and tasted it. It made no impression, but then, I was really concentrating on the barbecue. This style of barbecue is typically sauce-free, and that is how I would recommend trying it!

I sure hope we get to play there again, cause that was a really great night for me: playing music, wonderful (free) food and free drinks, plus a really great atmosphere and very friendly staff. Hill Country might be my new favorite NYC venue to play in, and I could see myself becoming a regular there. I am a defector!

To keep up the count, I had 2 spare ribs at Hill Country, pushing the Year of the Pig count up to 106 ribs. Thanks to all pigs involved!

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A few weeks ago, I got a new smoker because of the sorry inadequacy of my electric smoker. Do not buy one of those. They are lame. If you want a good and still affordable smoker for home use, get the one I got, the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, which you should be able to find for around 180 smackers. It comes recommended even by serious Pitmasters, and is capable of kicking out some top notch barbecue. Also, there is a great website obsessively dedicated to its use: The Virtual Weber Bullet which is quite helpful for getting you started and is loaded with clear instructions and lots of pictures. Here is a proud picture of my new Weber Smokey Mountain, happily cohabitating with Phil, the garden gnome:

Over the past two weeks I have fired off the Smokey Mountain a few times to test it out for shorter smoking sessions and have smoked trout and chicken a couple times, with good success. And so it was that yesterday was its maiden voyage for smoking ribs. The night before I had trimmed and generously coated 1 1/2 racks of spare ribs with Magic Dust, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Around 10 am or so I took them out and put them in the rib rack, ready for the smoke.

Then I got the smoker set up and lit a small chimney of charcoal, around 20 briquets. I decided to test out the Virtual Weber Bullet Page’s “Minion Method” which basically means that you start with a small amount of lit briquets on a pile of unlit ones, so that they gradually light the other ones at a slow, long pace, supposedly keeping a very steady, slow burning, low temperature fire.

I have to say compared to my other brief experiences with this smoker so far, this method really made it a breeze to operate at a steady temperature. After lighting a small chimney of charcoal, and loading the coals and meat in the smoker, it was off and running. I tossed 2 or 3 good wet chunks of hickory and a small handful of oak chips on the coals for smoke wood. At the beginning I babysat the smoker and adjusted the bottom vents some, but the temperature quickly stabilized right at what I would think is an ideal temperature of about 220-230 degrees (measured with a candy thermometer at the top vent). And that was that! The ribs were smoking away by around 11 am, and for the next few hours I went about my business. I checked on the smoker every 30 minutes or so, but it needed almost no adjustment, and just kept burning away at the right temperature. After a couple hours, around 1:30, I opened the smoker and turned the racks over in the rib rack and gave them a little spritz of apple juice:

After having the smoker open a while, I noticed that the charcoal did start to flare up from the oxygen, and I had to close the bottom vents all the way to try and keep the temperature down as it flared up, approaching 250. I was expecting to smoke the ribs for around 5-7 hours, so around 3 I opened up the smoker again, to turn them and spritz them again with apple juice. At this point they looked pretty close to done to me so I got my butt in gear making the sauce (see Apple City Barbecue Sauce Recipe from the last post) that I was planning to coat them with for the last 20 or 30 minutes of smoking. This sauce has ground up bacon and apples in it, so that is pretty cool. Everything is better with bacon right? So why not barbecue sauce!? I had cooked up the bacon earlier, and I whipped up the rest of the sauce as fast as I could, and gave the ribs a nice coating to let it set up for a little while. The sauce was quite tasty on its own, trust me, and at that point the ribs had a nice looking coating of Magic Dust that looked even better.

I let them smoke for another 20 or 30 minutes, and then opened up the smoker again. They looked wonderful!

I took them off. I had smoked 1 1/2 racks of trimmed spare ribs on the top grate, and the three large “tip” pieces that I had trimmed off on the bottom grate with some kidney beans.

I let the ribs rest on the cutting board for a little while. It was a lot of meat for me to contemplate since I was home alone with no one to share them with, but this was my first time trying ribs in my new smoker and it was nice to try it without feeling like I needed to feed anyone. I cut up some of the trimmings to put in the beans, and froze the others along with a half rack of ribs, to see how they hold up for freezing…

Of course, I didn’t hesitate to slice off a couple ribs for an early dinner, and sat in the back yard and tried them. My first impression was that they looked perfect to me with a nice solid but not charred outside. The inside showed a nice red smoke ring around the edge of the meat, the first time I have really gotten that in ribs that I have cooked. And how did they taste? Fine. Very, very fine. I was giddy about it really. The meat was juicy and succulent. The sauce and the magic dust rub gave it a nice spicy robust flavor that was delicious and went very well with the juicy, smoky pork flavor of the rib meat. The texture of the rib meat was firm and meaty, but moist and tender and full of flavor. I am sure there are lots of other ways I can learn to cook ribs equally well, but I really don’t know what I could do to make them much better. I just hope I can reproduce these!

These ribs were basically cooked following the “Apple City Barbecue Grand World Championship Ribs” recipe out of the book Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue which I plugged in the last post. I used the rub and sauce from the recipe, but used different smoking methods and hickory and oak rather than apple wood, which I am sure would also be delicious. I think this rub and sauce are a winning combo, but if I had to give most of the credit to one over the other, I would say the Magic Dust is a real winner. Try it out!

As for the rib count for the Year of the Pig, counting what I had the day I cooked them and for leftovers over the next week plus the half rack that I froze, I had another 14 ribs, putting me well over the 3 pig mark at a 102 ribs. And thank you piggy!

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