I think that the chuck ribs and short plate ribs are the same thing.
Last week I did my first short plate ribs, but is was only the three meatiest bones. Yes they were fatty, but mine rendered out very well and was THE most delicious piece of meat I have probably ever eaten in my life. I kid you not, I almost cried. It was that good. I cooked them at 275ish for close to 7 hours.
At the same time, I also cooked some thinner beef ribs that were probably regular short ribs. I was really worried about those because it essentially looked like really fatty bacon. I was sure there was going to be no edible meat, but it rendered perfectly and was every bit as good as the short plate, but with less meat (still had lots of meat though). There were no visible veins of fat left after cooking them. These ribs contract so much when they cook, that what initially looks like a thin little layers of meat, scrunch up to a good thickness in the end.
Both of these cuts were cut fresh from the same hanging cow, and not in a cryovac (I got lucky and the lady at the butcher shop wasn't sure what I wanted, so she told me told me to go back into the cold locker and show the butcher where on the cow to cut, how cool is that? :grin
Today, I bought about five bones of beef short ribs (of the thinner kind, not the short plate) from another store, but it's was from a cryovac. Planning on cooking it on Tuesday, so we'll see if I get the same consistency in the meat and if it renders out the same.
Below I cut and pasted a description of short ribs from the amazing ribs site. The website link has more info. I had to read this a few times because it's a bit confusing, but it seems that chuck ribs and short plate are the same thing:
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Short ribs: The meat is on top of the bones
The best cut of beef ribs comes from the lower,
ventral, section, from the 6th through 10th rib, roughly the same cut as the
St. Louis cut of pork ribs. It is called
the short plate, and the ribs are called
short ribs not because they are short in length, but because they come from what is called the short plate. The short plate is located right in front of another inexpensive, chewy but flavorful cut, the flank steak, and just behind another favorite cut for barbecue, the
brisket. The bones are almost straight and they have 1-2" of meat on top. They are good for
barbecue, kalbi, and
braising. Shorties are my favorite cut for barbecue.
Short plate
This is the primary section from which the different short rib cuts are fabricated.
There are four bones and the meat is thicker on one side from near the shoulder and those are called chuck ribs sometimes. They're the best. The muscle is the
serratus ventralis and it has a lot of connective tissue as well as marbling which means big flavor. Brazilian steakhouses like to skewer the whole shortplate and rotisserie it. They then slice the meat off across the grain, parallel to the bone.
http://amazingribs.com/recipes/beef/zen_of_beef_ribs.html
