Saturday, February 20, 2010

Dino Bones: Beef Back Rib Version

Heaven on a plate...

I knew this weekend was going to be full of some good cooking because we had two good food omens on Friday.

On Friday morning, Alexis and I are driving to work, cutting through a subdivision shortcut and at a stop sign, a raven flies in front of us CARRYING A FREAKING PANCAKE ! ! Our jaws dropped and we looked at each other with a "I really didn't just see THAT, did I?" look. [Yes, that happened exactly as written, this isn't just for effect.]

The second good food omen? Oh, Walmart had beef back ribs on sale for about $7 for a pack of a 7 bone portion. $1 a rib? Yes please! Can anyone scream.....

Back in December, I wrote about "Dino Bones", which are big barbecued beef ribs. In that post I mentioned that there are two cuts used for this, untrimmed beef short ribs and beef back ribs. Then I used the short ribs. Today, I tried the back rib version. This cut of beef is the bone part of a standing rib roast ("prime" rib) and it's what they cut off of a boneless rib roast (where ribeye steaks come from).

I had Trevor rub the ribs with a dry rub (Weber Chicago Steak seasoning and some black pepper).

And then onto the Big Green Egg they went. You want your cooker, smoker, grill, whatever set up for an INDIRECT cook at a grate temp of 225-250f (that's a dome temp of 250-275 on a large BGE). Today I used lump charcoal and oak wood chips.

These ribs cooked way faster than the short ribs. At about two hours, they were already at an internal temp of 170f so I glazed them with one of my favorites, Chok'on Dis Blaz'n Glaze (awesome stuff for beef).

Notice that the meat didn't draw back off of the bones as much as the short rib version did. I suppose that is because this is a leaner cut of beef.

Plated it up with two sides.

We LOVED these! The beef flavor is similar to steak (no surprise) but there is a little "picking" to do to get it all from the bone. They had just the right smoky flavor, not over the top. The heat from the Blaz'n Glaze let you know it was there but it wasn't too "in your face". Ok, it was a little "in your face" but it didn't knock any teeth out. But if you don't like heat, you could use a beef bbq sauce instead.

If all things were equal (price, availability, etc), we both liked the beef back ribs Dino Bones over the short rib Dino Bones but they are both good.