One of our friends unfortunately had a fire in their house over the holidays. The family is okay, but they are going to be living in an apartment for at least 6 months while their house is renovated. We decided to have a surprise potluck lunch for them, and my wife volunteered me to make ribs. Of course, I was more than happy to do this. That’s when she told me that the potluck was to start at 1 pm. Counting backwards, that meant starting cooking at 7 am, which meant starting prep work at 6 am. On a weekend. And I like to sleep in. So I dutifully set my alarm. I didn’t do anything different from my usual ribs. I made a rib rub à la Aaron Franklin’s approach, and applied it to six racks of ribs. I rubbed the ribs with some olive oil before putting the rub on. I loaded up Smaug with the ribs. He was stabilized at 225ºF. About 5-1/2 hours later, this was the result.
I impressed myself by managing to get all six racks into the house all on one plate.
I had to try out one of the ribs to make sure they came out okay, of course.
The potluck was a great time. Folks there seemed to like the ribs. I know they all were gone by the time we had to leave for my son’s basketball game.