The following recipe is going to teach you a "competition style" rib that is sure to wow your guests at your next BBQ. This recipe utilizes spare ribs but the same method can be applied to baby back ribs. Although the cook time on baby backs may be a little shorter.
Meat Church How To YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/C76PIwTxkyU
Ingredients
- Pork ribs (preferably St Louis cut)
- Meat Church's Holy Gospel BBQ Rub + Honey Hog Hot BBQ Rub
- Meat Church Dia de la Fajita
- Other great options Honey Hog, Gospel, Holy Voodoo
- 1 cup of apple juice for spritzing
- 1 bottle of squeeze butter or 5 pats of butter
- 1 cup of brown sugar
- Your favorite BBQ Sauce. We love Meat Mitch Whomp
- Texas Pepper Jelly Apple Cherry Hab Rib Candy
Prepare your smoker at 275 degrees. We recommend hickory wood for this smoke.
Flip the ribs meat side down and remove the membrane off the back of the rack. This is very easily accomplished by grabbing the membrane with a paper towel and pulling it off. Removing the membrane will allow your rub to penetrate into the meat more effectively.
Apply one heavy coat of our Honey Hog Hot BBQ rub to the bone side. Allow the rub to adhere for 15 - 30 minutes.
Flip the ribs over. Apply a light sprinkling of our Fajita rub. Next, apply a heavy coat of Honey Hog to the meat side. Cover the meat 100%. Allow it to fully adhere for another 15 - 30 minutes. Tip: I would allow 30 minutes per side if time allows. No longer.
Place the ribs meat side up in the smoker. Spritz the ribs with apple juice every 45 minutes.
Smoke for 2.5 hours or until you get to a beautiful mahogany color. The visual queue is most important. Get ready to wrap when you have achieved the beautiful color you desire.
Wrap the ribs in aluminum foil to protect that perfect color. Lay out 2 long pieces of aluminum foil. Create a bed with 1 handful of brown sugar and 5-6 pats of butter on the foil. I also love to pour a bead of Texas Pepper Jelly across this mixture. Some folks use a hot sauce instead. Lay the ribs meat side down on the sweet concoction with the meat side down\bones up.
Return the ribs to the smoker and continue to cook until meat has pulled back and exposed the bone about 1/4" inch the ribs are done. This typically takes ~2 hours depending on the ribs.
Remove the ribs from the foil and sauce or glaze them at this point.
We use a mix of 3:1 mix of our favorite BBQ + Texas Pepper Jelly Rib Candy. TPJ has a lot of great flavor options (Apple Cherry Habanero, Apple n Brown Sugar, Peachy Peach. Feel free to make this recipe your own by choosing sauces you love.
It is only necessary to leave the ribs on the cooker for 10 - 15 minutes to set the sauce. This will keep the bbq sauce from running down your face. I love to sauce in the foil boat on the pit to keep the pit clean.
Remove the ribs from the smoker. Allow to sit for a few minutes. Then slice and enjoy!
