Ribs &ndash; Part One

Busy day today! First thing this morning I baked some yummy Banana Sweet Potato Muffins.

And then I started the ribs.

My husband and a friend of his are brewing something like 20 gallons of beer today, so I figured I’d help out by manning (or womanning) the smoker today.

About 6:40 this morning I started the coals, and while they were heating up, I prepped the ribs.

Actually, I’m not flying solo on this one – Bill made the rub while I was panning the muffins and starting the coals.

Anyway, the main thing you need to do with a rack of ribs (we had three), is to remove the membrane that lies over the backs of the ribs. It tens to shrink and pull the ribs as they cook, and it’s a little on the tough side if it’s there when you eat.

Removing the membrane isn’t all that hard – you just find the second rib in on the short side (the side where the ribs are shorter, I mean), slide the tip of a knife along the bone, wiggle it around and pull up a bit – do this with the knife tip facing the rest of the ribs – and then get your fingers under the membrane and gently pull up.

The membrane should peel away from the ribs in one long sheet, like this:

So the undersides, or backs, of the ribs looked like this:

I patted them dry and sprinkled some of the rub on each. I rubbed the rub in (there’s no other way to phrase that…or maybe…I worked the rub in) and then flipped them over, dried the top sides,

and worked the rest of the rub into all of them.

Yay, ready to go!

Bill would chastise me for my phrasing there. “A real Pit Master wouldn’t say ‘yay,’ he would say. He also said a real Pit Master wouldn’t smoke ribs wearing these slippers:

Well, I’m not your average Pit Master.

Anyway, once the coals were nice and hot, I poured them into the smoke box, and added some more coal and some cherry wood.

Nice and hot in there.

I put the ribs on the grill, at the end farthest away from the smoke box, and I’ve now spent the morning trying to keep the temperature at about 225 F.