Beef Short Ribs, the King of Q

[onerackrags]

I just recently joined the forum and wanted to share my casual yesterday/ Wednesday cook. One of my current jobs is in the Earth Fare (like a Whole Foods as far as quality focus, but smaller, less expensive, and more of a local vibe) meat and seafood department, and we had a sale running on grass fed Australian beef short ribs for $5.99/lb, plus 20% off as an employee. These rang in at a cool ~$21 .

I got them Tuesday, so Tuesday night before going to sleep, I prepped them up. The first picture is them untrimmed. The second is with the top silver skin, any big hard fat chunks, and the back membrane removed. The third is my standard dry-ish brine that I do on basically everything...lather some Crystal hot sauce then generous coverage of kosher salt. I'm a firm believer of an extended (24 hours/ overnight/ several hours depending on the thickness of the meat) salting/ dry brining. They then went wrapped into the fridge to sleep around 1030PM.
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I got things moving around 8AM on Wednesday morning. I'm transitioning from having used Royal Oak lump for years to Royal Oak Chef's Select, so I filled up my charcoal basket with the remainder of my lump and some supplemental Chef's Select with some cherry and oak wood chunks dispersed throughout to add flavor throughout the cook. I like milder flavor, so I am quite partial to cherry. I also feel like it adds nice color. While I have mostly been happy with Royal Oak lump, I became increasingly frustrated with the inconsistency of the pieces ranging from pebbles to near logs and how that inconsistency impacts the stability of the burn and therefore temperature. I recently became familiar with Chef's Select through these forums and will likely be sticking with them. I've only used them a couple times but they seem to hold a stable temperature with less tinkering and are still 100% hardwood. They are a great deal through doitbest.com, ~$25 for a 40lb bag. I got the top layer of coals quickly running with my Harbor Freight propane torch (a must have in my opinion, makes lighting soooo much easier and faster and only $20). I let the drum warm up and stabilize for around 45 minutes while I had some breakfast and finished prep on the ribs, which for me is just a final touch of a heavy dose of black pepper. Beef is best in my opinion with simple seasoning and letting the meat shine through in all its glory. They went on at 9AM around 225*, at which point I added two wood chunks to the top of the coals. I cook most things in the 225-275* range and don't fuss too much as long as I stay in that range. The first picture is of my current drum, the third of its kind. I'm not overly handy, so I keep my builds super simple...three ~3/4" holes around the bottom for inflow with 1"x1" magnets to damper as needed then eight 1/2" holes in a circle on the lid for exhaust again with the same magnets to damper as needed. Plus, gotta have a fun bottle opener. I had this opener on the first barrel I built in 2013 and brought it along to this one that was built more recently in late 2018. It gets dubbed as the man-bear-pig of South Park fame, but also applicable because the barrel is used by man with a bear opener and often cooking some form of pig . The first and second pictures are of the barrel with some fresh pow-pow from Tuesday night on the ground. The third is of the meat after its peppering and the fourth of it on the barrel after about an hour with a water pan sitting directly below (two 22.5" standard Weber grates, then a pizza pan with holes drilled in it on top of the charcoal basket as a makeshift heat deflector).
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It was a relatively stable cook requiring just a couple reshufflings of those finicky lump coals in the early goings. I prefer not to wrap in any way, foil or butcher's, unless I'm forced to due to time constraints, so I let them run from 9AM-6PM naked on the smoker, spraying generously with water occasionally when I needed to reshuffle the coals or when it had gone a couple hours without. From what I understand, wet meat attracts smoke as well as helps the bark from drying out too much. As for not wrapping, I'd rather sacrifice my time to a longer unwrapped cook than do anything that might hold the bark back from its peak. At 6PM, the weather took a turn with heavy rain dripping through the overhead porch onto the smoker, so I was forced to bring them indoors. At this point they were getting close, internal temp ~180* and starting to feel buttery. I double layer wrapped them in heavy duty foil (for some reason, I feel like unwrapped in the oven causes meat to dry out; not based on any evidence just my potentially unreasonable thought process) with the probe inserted then into a ~250* oven in an uncovered baking pan. They stayed in there until 7PM at which point they were probing just right, ~198* internal. I removed them and put them to bed in a cooler wrapped in two blankets/ towels. At this stage, I popped some mac n cheese into the oven to bake off. For those that are from or have visited the Atlanta area, the recipe is based off of Community Q's with my own minor spice twists. By the time the mac was ooey gooey ready to eat, it was 745PM, a shorter than I'd like rest period but adequate enough with the wife starting to get whiney for mealtime . Let's just say it was a good dinner . Thanks for looking!
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[gsmith]

Looks fantastic

[Brisket Nerd]

Beautiful. Nice write up.

[4ever3]

Good GRIEF man!!!

[Radrob]

DUUUDE!!


That last pic is money, Awesome cook!

[rwalters]

Fantastic post! That is one heck of a tasty looking dinner... nicely done. I’ll be doing about 15 lbs of short ribs in a couple of weeks. It’s been a little while since I’ve done them... but I remember it being about an 8 hour cook time at 225° on my pellet smoker. Hoping that’s about right and I don’t have a late meal. I’ll probably give it 10 hours and just rest covered in a 170° oven if done early.

[mcyork28]

Nice!!

[onerackrags]

Originally Posted by rwalters

Fantastic post! That is one heck of a tasty looking dinner... nicely done. I’ll be doing about 15 lbs of short ribs in a couple of weeks. It’s been a little while since I’ve done them... but I remember it being about an 8 hour cook time at 225° on my pellet smoker. Hoping that’s about right and I don’t have a late meal. I’ll probably give it 10 hours and just rest covered in a 170° oven if done early.

Thanks! I've done them five or so times, typically for special occasions since they can be a bit pricey, but the price on these could not be refused. Mine do tend to take 10+ hours, maybe because I try to avoid wrapping? Not sure if you wrap? My best cooking buddy and I always joke around that the BBQ gods scoff at any time planning you might try to do. It's almost always never enough in our cases ha

[dadsr4]

Originally Posted by rwalters

Fantastic post! That is one heck of a tasty looking dinner... nicely done. I’ll be doing about 15 lbs of short ribs in a couple of weeks. It’s been a little while since I’ve done them... but I remember it being about an 8 hour cook time at 225° on my pellet smoker. Hoping that’s about right and I don’t have a late meal. I’ll probably give it 10 hours and just rest covered in a 170° oven if done early.

That will reduce the stress of the cook, for sure. You don't even need the oven for two hours or less if you have some old towels to wrap them in a cooler.

[SonVolt]

I'm generally not a fan of "grass fed" (finished) beef for a variety of reasons, but those look fantastic. Even if they were taken from inferior cows, frozen, and shipped on a boat half-way across the globe in a big steel shipping container, then trucked in from the coast all the way up to your "local" butcher dept, yet somehow still managing to sport a sticker price well below beef raised here at home in your back yard. No corners being cut to make that happen, nope. :)

**ok I'm kidding, kinda. Cattle owner so had to throw that out there. I'm sure Aussie beef is fine. Maybe.

We've got Earth Faire's around here... pretty cool places. Whole Foods has been steadily declining in quality across the board IMO.

[onerackrags]

Originally Posted by SonVolt

I'm generally not a fan of "grass fed" (finished) beef for a variety of reasons, but those look fantastic. Even if they were taken from *inferior cows, frozen and shipped on a boat half-way across the globe in a big steel shipping container :)

We've got Earth Faire's around here... pretty cool places. Whole Foods has been steadily declining in quality across the board IMO.


**sorry, cattle owner so had to throw that out there. I'm sure Aussie beef is fine. Maybe.

HAHA! I was definitely hesitant. My managers in the meat department regularly advise customers that ask against grass fed. It seems most people have been brainwashed to think grass fed means better quality for whatever reason, including myself before I started working there. Nonetheless, both they and I (and you) could see from the start that these had promise and I’m sure glad I gave them a go!

[rwalters]

Originally Posted by onerackrags

Thanks! I've done them five or so times, typically for special occasions since they can be a bit pricey, but the price on these could not be refused. Mine do tend to take 10+ hours, maybe because I try to avoid wrapping? Not sure if you wrap? My best cooking buddy and I always joke around that the BBQ gods scoff at any time planning you might try to do. It's almost always never enough in our cases ha

I hear ya! Several years ago I started giving myself a 2-3 hour buffer for the bigger/longer cooking low n slow meats and just holding them wrapped in a 170° oven if they finish early. That has served me well. I will most likely not be wrapping these short ribs during the cooking process... perhaps I’ll plan on a 12 hour cook. It’s not as if a possible 2 hour rest is gonna hurt them... lol. How often did you find yourself spritzing these SR’s?

[rwalters]

Originally Posted by dadsr4

That will reduce the stress of the cook, for sure. You don't even need the oven for two hours or less if you have some old towels to wrap them in a cooler.

I know, but I have really come to like the 170° oven setting [emoji106]

[mkf350]

Looking good!

[lastmajordude]

In the words of a good friend of mine...”what more would you want”!!!!!!! awesome!!!!!