First I remove the membrane. This is the single most important step in prepping your ribs. Leaving the membrane will make the ribs tougher than they should be and will prevent flavor (smoke & rub) penetration from that side. It's an important step, but really not that difficult at all.
Rub the bottom of the racks:
Rub on the top. You'll notice that I don't actually "rub" the meat. Just sprinkle the spices on meat. As the ribs sweat they'll pull the flavors in. I always apply the rub at least a couple hours before I'm going to put the meat on the cooker too...
I prepare the smoker to use the Minion Method. Basically you put unlit charcoal in the ring and have your smoking woods mixed in. In order to light the smoker I'll just throw 10-15 lit coals on top. The unlit coals will light as the cook goes on and it makes it pretty easy to maintain low 'n' slow temps. For this smoke I used a combo of apple & hickory. The apple chips are mixed throughout the charcoal. The bigger chunks are hickory. I like to mix hickory with fruit woods when doing pork.
The setup...
Additional apple chips I keep soaked. I'll add these if it looks like I'm not getting enough smoke. No need to soak the original chips that you're mixing with unlit charcoal, but these will be thrown directly on the fire, so soaking them will help them smoke rather than just flame up.
In the chimney I've put the few coals that I'll light. No need for more than this.
I use the deep fryer burner to light the chimney. Newspaper or paper towels works, but this is REALLY easy
Here I've put the lit coals on the unlit bed of charcoal & smoke wood.
Smoker is loaded up. Full racks don't fit too well, so I cut them in half, 3 halves on top and 3 on the bottom rack. The cooker is pretty consistent that both racks will stay pretty close in temp.
Sitting right where I want to be at about 225-230.
Ribs have been left pretty much alone for about 2 1/2 hours. The meat has just started to pull away from the bone, so I'm ready to wrap them in foil.
Each rack gets wrapped in foil with a bit of apple juice. This will braise the meat and help it get super tender.
Now that they're in foil I'll just pile 'em all up together
After 2 hours in the foil the meat is now as tender and moist as you could hope for. The meat has really pulled away from the ends of the bones and the ribs will sag if you try to hold the rack by one end. I baste them with the juices from the foil and sprinkle a little more of the rub on 'em. Letting them cook for awhile unwrapped will help firm the meat up a touch, it's too soft right out of the foil.
20 mins later I'm applying sauce. 2 of these racks have a Memphis style sauce, the 3rd is a South Carolina style mustard based sauce.
10 mins longer and the first layer of sauce has caramelized and I add another coating of sauce and they're ready to come off.
The final product, sliced into individual bones. The pink around the edges is the smoke ring.
That's pretty much step by step through my rib process. The final result of these ribs was fabulous. First time I've made 'em all year actually, and I don't know why I don't do it more often. So very good.
