My latest back ribs

[T Rex]

Here is a picture of the latest ribs I did on the KK. It makes me wonder how I ever enjoyed ribs before I purchased a KK. Set the KK at 225F for 4.5 hours, it could not be simpler!

T Rex

[Conodo12]

Heh heh - mine will be coming off the KK in about 2.5 more hours! No baby back today - full rack of spares - big one too - 7lbs! 'scuse me while I go refill my beer....

[myself888]

Rib Bummer!

Instead of making our own rib rub, we bought one. I don't know if we did something wrong or if we just can't handle as much salt as the manufacturer assumes people must like.

The entire 3 pack is inedible - even after rinsing them twice and sticking them back on the KK for another hour.

What a disaster.

Here is what we did: We rubbed the racks and put them in a cooler overnight, then followed the standard low and slow procedure - full basket, heat deflector, main grate.

After temp stabilized at around 235*, we placed the three racks on the main grate and left the ribs to cook. After about 3 hours we cut a rib to taste and discovered that we had a little ribs with our grilled salt.

[Firemonkey]

What rub did you use?

[Syzygies]

Re: Rib Bummer!

or if we just can't handle as much salt as the manufacturer assumes people must like.

We make up our rub with no salt added, then salt the ribs separately, after removing membrane but before applying rub, the night before the cook. We salt by weight.

For ribs my recent rule of thumb is 0.8% salt by weight. Takes a digital scale to weigh the salt in grams; to convert the ribs, a pound is 454 grams. (Some people may find it easier to recall that an ounce is 28 grams. )

To me, 1% tastes too salty; you may want to start with 0.7% or 0.6%.

In other words, we use 3.6 grams of salt per pound of ribs. For a recent cook involving 11.79 lbs of ribs we used 42 grams of salt. Find your "salt constant" and adjust accordingly.

I have various salts weighing anywhere from 8 grams to 18 grams per tablespoon; one can't reliably measure salt by volume unless you're always using the same salt. People in other countries do wonder how we get by cooking by volume in the U.S.

We do measure salt by volume for quick brines, but then we are always using the same salt: bulk sea salt from the bins in back of the local health food store. For longer brines such as a house-cured ham I do measure by weight, following instructions in Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand.

[Porkchop]

myself888, that is truly a bummer. i have to say, tho, if you aren't making your own rub, you're sitting out half the game. i have my own approach to rubs that isn't as technical as syz's, but i may have to try his method out. i'm gonna guess that the reason for salting the ribs prior to the rub is to get the whole transport-thru-semi-permeable-membranes voodoo going. syz, do you think crystal SIZE makes any difference in this action? also, do you use sugar at all? since it is also crystalline in nature, would it also improve permeability if applied prior to spices?

anyway, if you want maybe a less weigh-everything approach to making a rub, i've got a pretty simple one for you...

Dry Rubs 101

scroll down; the original link to my long-dead webpage is, well, dead. but firemonkey was kind enough to copy over everything into the thread. it's not the end-all-be-all of rub-making, but i think it's a good jumping off point...

[Syzygies]

I haven't used sugar in a dry rub, although there's always some sugar in my wet brines.

Our basic dry rub is to collect assorted dried chiles from farmers markets or Mexican markets, pan roast, seed and grind with black pepper. It would take a long angel, devil on each shoulder debate to get me to use anything more besides smoke; I want to taste the meat. But I admire other people's variants, my Korean friend's fusion ribs rock, and that dry rub 101 looks tasty. (Ever try drying your own garlic in a dehydrator? Serous oomph.)

[Porkchop]

i haven't tried drying my own garlic, and i would probably use my kk for that rather than a dehydrator (since i don't have a dehydrator). i HAVE smoke-dried jalapeno seeds (leftovers from abts) and then ground them up with really good results.

but, one of the reasons i do the "rubs 101" thing is that i want something quick and easy that tastes good. i RARELY write things down, but the technique is easy to remember, and is subject to change depending on my mood.

brining makes me nervous lately. all the pork products i see out there are already "enhanced" with saline maybe the reason myself888's ribs came out too salty. for me, adding sugar isn't the issue; it's the salt. since i can't really afford "premium" meats (grass fed, humane, NOT already brined/injected, etc) for a family of 5, i have to make due. so, if i were to back off of anything, it would be the salt. i figure, both sugar and salt are crystalline, and therefore would have similar effects on the meat, getting those spices INTO the meat. i don't KNOW that tho; not a biologist or chemist.

what i would like to know is, what happens when you brine "treated" meats? is it possible that, depending on the amount of sugar/salt/spice in your brine could actually REDUCE the salt already in the meat? usually, these meats tell you the concentration of the solution used, so could you use this to brew up a brine that would work with that?

myself888, were those ribs already "treated" before you got your mitts on them? and, ribs like that are NEVER inedible, you just have to think what you might use them for. cut up the meat for green beans, or baked beans, or collard greens, or soup or stew. you get the idea. just skip the salt and use the ribs instead. i would have just made a BIG ol' pot of pinto beans(or baby limas), and put a slab of those ribs in instead of hamhock. as long as you do the beans from dry (not canned), there's NO SALT.

[Syzygies]

what i would like to know is' date=' what happens when you brine "treated" meats? is it possible that, depending on the amount of sugar/salt/spice in your brine could actually REDUCE the salt already in the meat?[/quote']

Great question. The idea behind Paul Bertolli's brining advice is that meat is something like 2/3rd water, and in a long enough brine the salt distributes itself. So compute the total water including the meat, add the desired amount of salt for a specific salinity at equilibrium, and wait.

I happen to love the giant Cambro food containers. One approach to Paul Bertolli's concern is to use so much water that the meat becomes insignificant. As in 10x water to meat by weight, then without doing any arithmetic you simply can't mess up by more than 10%.

So yes, you could pull down the meat salinity to the brine salinity, with enough brine. The problem here is that one's intuitions for how much salt goes in a brine are formed by short brines. With a longer brine, the same recipe tastes saltier. So go easy. And don't brine so long that spoilage becomes a possibility.

[Porkchop]

syz,

1) CAMBRO = WIN! you must have served some time behind the line! a cambro full of 1/2 pans full of pork or ribs, sitting around for a couple hours to "hotbox" til the catering job is on makes for some good eatin'... could never get the smell of old BBq out of 'em tho.

2) using a LOT of water by weight sounds like excellent advice for bringing the salinity of the meat in line with what you're wanting. i guess a good target would be your aforementioned 0.8% you use in your rubs. after brining a few days like that, just hit it with a salt-free dry rub and you'd be good to go, yeah?

i bet i'm complicating this a bit too much tho. from reading your prior post on salt content in rub, if our slab of ribs already contains an 8% solution pre-injected/tumbled/whatever'd, we can just skip right to the spices sans salt. so, if i want my spices to penetrate, maybe a light coat of sugar first to help with the whole process of transporting those spices into the meat, and let the whole mess do it's thing in the fridge for a few days.

[T Rex]

I have found a much simpler approach which is also enjoyable....... have an extra glass of wine or a couple extra beer and everything tastes better.......

Hmmmmmm, based on my culinary skills, I guess I now know why my alcohol consumption is what it is...... Come to think of it, it has been substantially reduced since I acquired the KK..........

T Rex

[Syzygies]

The 0.8% salt for dry rubs was tuned by trial and error; I started by taking into account that ribs have a lot of bone weight.

For a wet brine, I've been treating a pork loin as 70% water, and going for a target salinity of 2.5%, down from an earlier 3%. This is not that salty; Paul Bertolli goes for at least 3%.

I use a spreadsheet, which doubles as a historical record; that's how I can now tell you what I do. The spreadsheet formulas are simple. A sample calculation went:

Jun 21, 2009

Cut	Bone-in Loin

# chops	6

Weight of meat, lb	6.15

Water fraction, %	70%

Salinity, %	2.5%

Brine water, g	4,000

Meat water, g	1,954

Total water, g	5,954

Total salt, g	149

Salt, actual g	140

Sugar, actual g	90

Written out,

6.15 lbs * (454 g/lb)= 2792 g meat

2792 g * 70% water = 1954 g water in meat

1954 + 4000 = 5954 g total water

2.5% salt * 5954 = 148 g salt

I have more cookbooks than math books, and Paul Bertolli is the only cookbook author with equations like this. You'd think one of the baking books (water content is critical to how bread comes out), but no.

[Firemonkey]

I have found a much simpler approach which is also enjoyable....... have an extra glass of wine or a couple extra beer and everything tastes better.......

I'm kicking back and offering a toast to T Rex while the experts work all this out. . Cheers!

There is plenty of truth to this method, though. I was visiting friends for thf weekend and this is what we cooked on:

As you can see, this was nowhere near as easy as using a KK, so we had to compensate with even more beer and wine (we emptied the kegerator too). It was a fun weekend and great to visit old friends. The 5 racks of ribs came out pretty good considering our handicap, and at that point, we weren't being too critical anyway!

[mguerra]

too salty

A lot of the rubs I see in the supermarket have salt as the first ingredient listed. Probably because it is cheap, and because lots of us do like salt! So I quit buying them. I very lightly salt my meats with kosher salt, wait a few minutes, and then apply my own salt free rubs. If you see any rub recipes in books or on the net that look good to you, just leave out the salt and try it this way.

[primeats]

FM, this looks like my place after my Birthday party last weekend! Rumor has it we all enjoyed BBQ brisket(fast method--unreal!), pulled pork(with and without sauce), Buffalo Wings(Costco/not bad). And throw in a few bottles of wine//beer/single malt/tequila. Advil next day with copious amounts of water. I agree with Doc about the salt, Mother used way too much when we were growing up and the salt shaker was prominent at the table. Now I use it sparingly, and not because I have to, it seems to make the roof of my mouth raw!

[Firemonkey]

This gathering was a birthday party, too.

One of my High School buddies was turning 40, so people brought wines from 1970. His kegerator was packing a fresh fill of one of the Old Dominion brews (Dominion Ale, I believe). Overall a fine weekend! And I think my liver is finally starting to recover

BTW, I usually go with Gatorade in the AM after a particularly lively evening. Works great!