ChefB Made Ribs

We had an.... incident over the PH16 Summer Charity Stream weekend. It was sometime in the middle of Saturday's festivities when ChefBrent and Rexhavoc reported that the freezer in the garage had died, sometime in the past week.

This meant all the meat stashed away in the freezer had to either be thrown away or cooked IMMEDIATELY. That means ribeye, filet mignon, flatiron steak, packs of chicken breasts, racks of spare ribs, ground beef for burgers... all had to be cooked during the charity stream or stashed in a freezer that was already mostly full.

So we made ribs.

The epitome of making lemons into lemonade, we cooked as much of that food as we could and fed it to our dozen house guests. But we saved the Ribs for Cooking With Heat!

Chef B's Patent Pending Rib Rub & Smoker Strategy

First, you'll need to get yourself some spare ribs. The rub recipe below covers 4-6 racks of spare ribs, but it's a spice powder that you can seal away for months and reuse later! Don't feel pressured to make all 6 racks at once!

Ok, ribs get. Now, get out your electric smoker.

Masterbuilt Bluetooth Smart Digital Electric Smoker

• Can hold 4 racks of ribs

• View internal temperature from your phone

• Washable chrome racks

• Tall boi design

Smoker? I don't know what that is!

ChefBrent and I are city slickers. We don't have much of a backyard, but we have a 6' driveway that can sit some outdoor appliances.

As far as electric smokers go, this one's done us proud. Bluetooth doesn't reach as far as we'd like, but that's the failings of Jaap Haartsen, not this little Masterbuilt smoker.

If you're looking for a smoker that can sit in the space of a mini fridge and not burn down your whole block, safe to say we recommend this one.

Before you start putting wood chips in this bad boy, You'll want to apply that rib rub and let it sit for a full 8 hours. Maximum flavortown absorption. Can I say flavortown?

Rib Rub Ingredients

• 1/2 c dark brown sugar

• 3 tbsp smoked paprika

• 3 tbsp kosher salt

• 1 1/2 tbsp granulated garlic

• 1 tbsp hot mexican chili powder

• 1 tbsp black pepper

• 2 tsp cumin

• 1 tbsp onion powder

• 1 tsp cayenne

How to make these delectable bois

1. (Optional, HIGHLY ADVISED) Remove the membrane on the spare ribs. It's not something that you'll be able to see immediately, and it's not something you'll want to tackle with a nice set of fingernails, but removing the membrane will add more flavor to the ribs than anything you do in the next 6 steps.

2. Thoroughly cover every visible inch of the rack with rib rub. Really get it in there. All the nooks and crannies. 

LET THIS SIT OVERNIGHT or for at least 8 hours. Trust me you want to leave this rub on for a while. Pop the pan in the fridge and go to sleep!

3. Add the wood chips (we used Hickory) and set your electric smoker to 225ºF.

4. Once smoke starts being produced at 225ºf, add your ribs directly to the chrome racks and cook for 3 hours. Use tongs to reposition the racks as necessary.

5. After 3 hours, remove the ribs from the smoker and get SAUCY. Drench them in a solid layer of sauce, wrap them tightly in aluminum foil, and drop them back into the smoker for 2 hours. What sauce do we recommend?

Rib Rack BBQ Sauce

Need a tasty BBQ sauce without HFCS or artificial colors? This is what we recommend. The variety pack comes in 3 unique flavors, perfect for THREE different racks of ribs, eh? ;)

It's been 5 hours of cooking in the smoker. 3 of those hours were uncovered cooking, 2 were wrapped in foil.

6. Now, open and peel back the foil around the ribs, creating a waterproof surface for the ribs to rest on. Do one more coat with BBQ sauce and pop the ribs, foil and all, back into the smoker (FOIL OPEN) for one last hour.

Your smoker should be maintaining 225ºF through the entire duration of the cook. You can maintain the smoke level by occasionally adding small amounts of additional wood chips. Adding too many chips at once will dramatically vary the amount of smoke. Waiting too long between woodchip refresh can also affect smoke levels.

7. After the last hour of cooking, remove your racks of ribs from the smoker and serve 'em! For parties, we cut our servings into 2-3 ribs each.