Ribs

[Dex]

Do all of you guys trim your own ribs? I have been purchasing spares at Restaurant Depot and trimming them. Was curious how many buy from Costco and get the already trimmed STL style ribs.

Ive thought about it... but too many times I've got packs where the butcher was knife crazy and some slabs had slits across the top.

 

[CBQ]

Done it both ways, depends on the product available. I will take a thick meaty rack whatever way I can get it.

 

[Swanny26]

I have been cutting my own for about 6 or 7 years

 

[Q-Dat]

I like to buy the St Louis cut if I can find them at a decent price. Maybe its my imagination, but it seems that the slabs they choose to trim are on average better quality than the whole slabs by the same company. Sometimes I will have to do some additional trimming because they don't always remove enough of the cartilage, but to me its still worth it.

 

[Sawdustguy]

We trim full spares down to St. Louis ourselves. The pre-cut St. Louis we have tried have had bone chips in them from being cut on a band saw. We have better results cutting them ourselves with a sharp knife.

 

[jketron]

I buy trimmed if they look good

 

[J&B'sBBQ]

We buy and cut ourselves mainly because of price differences, and those rib tips a great treat to throw on the smoker during a practice cook and nibble on or throw into some Brunswick stew :-D

 

[hamiltont]

Just another option... I prefer to buy whole Pork Spare Ribs & not trim to St. Louis. YMMV... Cheers!

Well, I just realized this post was in the "Competition" Section. :crazy: In which case, I buy whole spare ribs & trim my own...

 

[Jason TQ]

I get ours at RD and trim them down. I really liked Costco when they had full spares, but stopped buying them there after they started trimming them down. But in a pinch Costco still works because in my experience they normally under trim the spares so I can trim down more to get them where I like them. I rarely have seen where they overtrim. But like Dex I have had a time where Costco did put a slash in the main part of the meat. It was only one time though. I've also had slashes on the back of ribs from RD a few times too. It is bound to happen.

 

[BB-Kuhn]

I like trimming my own. I've gotten good and badly cut spares before. No dissing a good butcher, they could knife 10x better than me if they wanted to, but at that point he isn't concerned with appearance for competition like I am that day.

 

[indianagriller]

We use pre trimmed St. Louis cut Spares... Our meat supplier buys 2.5 and down racks from a distributor and there are 15-20 a case so i get to sort through what i want and what i dont want. The rest go out to the meat case.

 

[Wampus]

We use pre trimmed St. Louis cut Spares... Our meat supplier buys 2.5 and down racks from a distributor and there are 15-20 a case so i get to sort through what i want and what i dont want. The rest go out to the meat case.

Even before we started working with our current sponsor/supplier, we were buying pre-trimmed St Louis cut spares from RD and using them too.
We've also trimmed in the past too. I VERY MUCH prefer not to have to trim ribs anymore. :becky: