I love BBQ. Truly, cooking over an open fire, infusing the food with the flavour of smoke has to be my ABSOLUTELY favourite way to cook. In fact, I will be doing a lot of low and slow BBQ over the coming weeks, and months. I’ve even been known to have the BBQ fired up to smoke ribs for 4-6 hours in the middle of a heavy dump of snow,
Now, I will say something here that may upset a few people, while others will know exactly where I am coming from. One of my things when it comes to food is to find some authenticity and to help people to understand what certain cooking terms actually mean.
When I use the word barbecue or BBQ, it has a very specific meaning, and that is food that has been cooked with heat and/or smoke produced from hardwood or the charcoal of hard wood. Now, this is not intended as a value judgement, but rather to make sure that we are speaking the same language. When you are using propane, you are grilling, not BBQing.
Now, if you do want to replicate the BBQ experience with your propane grill, you can always use smoking chips. There are a wide variety of types available and some of my favourite include mesquite, maple, and apple wood, all of which have their own distinct flavour. You can take these chips, soak them in water for an hour or so, and wrap these in foil. Simply then poke a few holes in the top, and place it under the grill and on top of the lava rocks. These chips will smoke (funny thing when they are called a smoke chip…lol) and give you that flavour that you crave.
Now, back to this weeks video. You can go here to see my video about prepping the ribs for cooking. I then rubbed them down with my own spice rub creation. There are lots of great rubs available in the stores if you don’t want to make your own, or you can even come up with you own. I often make minor variations to the one that follows, so please feel free to adjust to your liking.
Spice Rub
30g Smoked Paprika
30g Hot parika
30g Chili powder
5g Dry Mustard
5g Granulated garlic
2g Chinese 5 spice
5g Ginger powder
60g Salt
30g Brown Sugar
10g Black Pepper
Rub down your ribs, give them a few taps to knock of the excess powder, and refrigerate for 24 hours to allow the meat to cure.
After 24 hours, the ribs are ready to cook. The thing I love about this rub is that is so flavourful, allowing you to cook these in a number of different ways. I smoked these for about 2.5 hours in 275-300F heat. You can do the same on your propane grill, or even in the oven. Simply set your oven to 275F and let roast for 2.5-3hrs.
You will notice that I don’t add any sauce to these ribs. Cooking them low and slow following the 24 hour cure gives you juicy and tender ribs that I don’t feel need sauce. Please go ahead and add it if you wish.