Ribs

The biggest UFC friends and I have been waiting for was coming up, UFC 116: Brock vs Carwin. I made ribs; these ribs took a couple of days. I brined my ribs in a water, brown sugar, and salt solution. I let the ribs set for 24 hours and put in 5 pounds of ice to keep the water cold. As the ice melted, I added 5 more pounds. I ended up using 15 pounds total.



After the ribs set for 24 hours, I dumped out the water and it was nasty; lots of impurities were removed. That's a good thing. After the ribs were drained, I let the ribs drip dry for a few minutes, then I coated them with my "Happiness" dry spice.



After I coated them with my spice, I made my own brown sugar by mixing white sugar with dark molasses.



I rubbed down my ribs with my brown sugar, wrapped them up in foil, and let them set for 24 hours in the fridge.



After they came out of the fridge, there was a lot of liquid in the foil.



After setting for 24 hours, I slow cooked them over hardwood lump charcoal. I kept the heat at about 275-300 and cooked them for about 5-5.5 hours. I kept fresh coals heating so the fire never went out.





To help keep the meat moist I used a spray bottle and kept spraying the ribs down with apple cider vinegar. I went through an entire 16 ounce bottle over the five hours. If you're wondering, the vinegar does not flavor the meat. You do not get a real vinegary meat. I learned about using vinegar for spraying from Steven Raichlen, the B.B.Q. master.


As you can see from how much bone you can see the meat lost a lot of liquid. Even though these babies were tender and moist, the bones pulled out like nothing.






These were really good and tender. You can do everything I did, except you can spice them however you choose. After the ribs came off the grill, I wrapped them in foil and let them sit for 30 minutes to rest and allow the juice to settle back into the meat.