Payne County Rust Smoking Spareribs

The great part about spareribs is that they only take five or six hours, so they're great to cook while you're mowing the lawn or gardening. Before I start any food prep, I always get my charcoal heating so that it's doing its thing while I'm preparing the meat. In this article, I've used a little white cube charcoal starter (some sort of gelled fuel), but I usually just use some paper towels wadded up with some vegetable oil drizzled over them. I generally use a nice strong wood for pork. Around here, pecan is a favorite, but I love peach when I can get my hands on it . Since the ribs will only be on the smoker for about six to seven hours, we can hit them pretty hard with smoke the entire time without the worry of them becoming bitter.

On to the ribs. The first thing I do when I'm at the store is pick out a couple of racks that look alike in texture and size. Thickness is the thing, it really nice to have them fairly uniform so they come out of the smoker at the same time.

After I take them out of the package, it's time to trim them up and clean them up. First, flip them so that you're looking at the back of the rack and can see the backs of the ribs. You'll generally notice a small two-inch skirt of tissue that is folded over against the rack. Trim this off:

After this scrap is trimmed, we can remove the breastbone meat. This step is optional, and leaves us with what is termed a St. Louis Style rack. Many people leave it on, but I prefer to cut the breastbone off so that the ribs are all the same length. This portion does contain a lot of meat, and can be smoked right alongside the ribs.

There is also a rather tough membrane on the inside of the ribs that we can deal with. This membrane lies along the backside of the ribs themselves, and is very tenuous. Sometimes the ribs come from the store with this membrane already peeled off. If it's still on the ribs, remove it by first cutting under the membrane with a knife until you can get a hold of it, then use a paper towel to gently peel it off the rack.

Now the ribs are all trimmed up, so the next step is to dry them thoroughly with some paper towels and prepare them to accept our dry-rub. As you might have read in other entries, mustard's flavor completely denatures when it gets over 110F for a while, ergo it makes an optimal glue to hold on dry rubs. Squirt some plain yellow mustard on the back side and spread it around with your hands or a basting brush.

Next, dry rub this side of the ribs with Rust Rub*.

*Rust Rub = 1part Payne County Rust : 2parts Brown Sugar

Now, flip your ribs onto the smoker grates seasoned-side-down, and add mustard and Rust Rub to the other side.

The next five to six hours will be spent mainly just holding a temperature of 250F, and applying some oil after about two hours to keep the product from drying out. You can use a basting brush, but I prefer to spray on cooking oil with a normal water bottle sprayer to keep form disturbing the dry rub. I simply oil the ribs, but many people use a briney mix of worchestershire sauce, teriyaki, soy, apple juice, vinegar, etc. Empty real estate in the smoker is ridiculous, so I generally throw a few hot links or sausages on at this point.

At about five to six hours in, the meat should start o pull away from the bone.

At this point, the ribs can overcook and burn very easily. After the ribs reach this point, I usually glaze with some good bbq sauce and wait another thirty minutes or so for the glaze to reduce.

I generally let them rest for about fifteen minutes then slice them with a heavy knife between each bone. (This post differs from the foil method in the Cheat Sheet, but both work great!)

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