Friday, December 30, 2011

Big Bad Beef Rub

Fall off the bone tender, beef back ribs
Lets just start this off with I got this rub recipe from amazing
My husband the other day decided that he wanted to eat beef ribs (the long ones not the short ones), well that poses a slight problem as we dont have a smoker and our bbq is dying (not to mention it doesnt have an easy way to hold temps for long periods of time).  So we have to cook them in the oven.  All the good recipes Ive heard of all have you smoke them for hours at a time, and all the oven recipes have you put 30 million things on your ribs so that in the end all you taste is their tomato-ie sauce that over powers the meat.  So this time we're taking the temp and time requirements from one recipe (random site) and the beef rub from an award winner's site. 

The exact recipe can be found at

Big Bad Beef Rub


Makes. About half a cup
Preparation time. About 10 minutes
3 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons table salt
1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
1 tablespoon onion powder
2 teaspoons mustard powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons chili or ancho powder
1 teaspoon chipotle or cayenne powder
About the black pepper. Lately I've been grinding my black pepper and then sifting it. I use the coarse stuff, and put the fine stuff in a pepper shaker.
About the chile powders. I'm looking for complexity with two different flavors and two different levels of heat. Most chili powders and ancho powders do not have a lot of heat, but good flavor. In fact, ancho is usually in a lot of chili powders. Go with ancho if you can find it. It has a nice raisiny character. With chipotle or cayenne I'm after a kiss of heat. Chipotle has better flavor though.
Do this
1) Mix the ingredients together in a bowl.
2) Lightly oil the meat with vegetable oil. Many of the flavors in the rub are oil soluble and the oil helps penetrate the meat. So does the salt, so don't leave it out. Spread the rub generously on beef brisket, not so thick on other, thinner cuts. You can apply it just before cooking or let it marinate on the meet overnight. Heck, I've left meat sit under this stuff for days. Fact is it doesn't penetrate a lot, but every little bit helps.
As for time well that depends on the ribs.. this guy suggests on a bbq'r these recommendations
1" thick meat should hit 150°F (Chicago style) in about 1 hour and 180°F (Texas style) in about 3 hours.
1.5" thick meat should hit 150°F in about 1.5 hours and 180°F in about 3.5 hours.
2" thick meat should hit 150°F in about 2 hours and 180°F in about 4 hours.
I treat them much the same as short ribs, described above. Depending on how much meat is on them and the thickness of the bones, they cook faster and can be finished in as little as three hours. Some folks like to sauce them.
as for the difference between chicago and texas style, I refer you to his site again

To prepare the ribs:
1) Begin by removing the fat and the very tough silverskin from the top of the meat. All of it. No need to remove the membrane from the exposed side of the bones as you do with pork ribs. Then cut slabs into individual bones if they did not come cut up. Inevitably some bones in a package have little meat and lotta fat. Trim them anyhow and cook them. There are several nice bites of meat on the sides of the bone, and they will finish in about an hour and you can munch on them while you wait for the thicker slabs to cook through.
2) Lightly coat the meat with vegetable oil so the oil soluble spices in the rub will dissolve and penetrate a bit. Flavor the meat with a rub that contains salt but very little sugar. Do the tops and sides, and coat them generously. If you can, let the rub sit on the meat in the refrigerator for an hour or three or even overnight.

though since I've already explained that we dont have a bbq that is up to this challenge here is the cooking directions we will be following, that like I said I got from a different site...
  1. Place the ribs and sauce(optional) in a large baking pan, in a single layer.
    Cover with a tightly fitting piece of aluminum foil.
  2. Bake the beef ribs at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 hours and check for doneness. If still tough, continue baking covered for another hour. When the ribs are tender, remove the foil, baste the ribs with the pan liquid, and continue baking for another half hour uncovered. 
  3. Baking the ribs in a foil covered pan steams them, a cooking process that does a very good job at tenderizing tough meats. The only more effective way to tenderize the ribs is to cook them in a pressure cooker...but that's another recipe! 

Review: (havent done one like this in a while!!) The ribs were extremely tender, the fat literally melted off of them.  I did have a problem with just how peppery that the rub was, my kids didnt really like it because of that, in the future I would use less black pepper and maybe a bit less cayenne, to pull the heat and overwhelming pepper level down.

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