Competition Rib Recipe - HowToBBQRight Baby Back Rib Method

Today what I'm doing is a little competition rib practice. I've got a new little Yoder pellet smoker. I think it's the 480 model I'm kind of playing with, testing it out, seeing how it does in competition. And first thing I'm going to cook on it is going to be some competition style ribs. I've got four slabs. These are already comp trimmed. You can see the size of them. Standard two and a half and down loin back ribs, pretty wide. I always have my butcher trim them down to where they look better in the box and it just makes the slabs more uniform. You can see they're kind of squared up. I have pulled the membranes off. What I look for in a competition rib is these straight bones. A lot of times when you buy loin back ribs or spare ribs, the bones will be straight and they'll go off at crazy angles and that makes cutting them difficult. But when you buy your ribs, if you'll look for these straight bones, the appearance will come out on the end. That's a big part of your appearance score is how they look. You'll notice I selected all these and the bones are as straight as they can be. These are really good comp ribs. Not so much worried about the fat content on them because I want some fat. I'm going to render that down, but I have trimmed them up. First thing I'm going to do is a buddy of mine, Phil Wingo, gave me some new stuff to try out and it's called his No Mercy. And what it is, it's like a pre-rub. It's got some pork flavoring in it and some salt, some other seasonings. It's going to kind of be a base layer instead of using traditional mustard. And he tells me that it's just a whammy jammy. So I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot today and compare it to the way I've been doing ribs. And all you do with this stuff is give it a light coating on each side, let it work its way into the meat. And I'll let it set a little bit before I come back. I want it to kind of get absorbed. I want the moisture to start pulling out of these ribs, this flavor base to work its way in. Phil promised me it was some good stuff, so I'm going to hold him to it and see how it does today. Now with my ribs, here's how I traditionally do them. You've seen me do this on videos hundreds of times, but I always give them a light coat of mustard. That's just a binder to help the rub stay on. Rub it in a little bit. And then I come back with my dry rub. And I use Killer Hog's The Barbecue Rub. You can find it on my website. It's the bomb diggity. Not only does it taste good, it gives you that appearance, that wow factor that those judges are looking for. When we designed it, that's exactly what we were looking for. There's some good rubs on the market, but there ain't nothing like The Barbecue Rub to give you that final color. Now just come back. A little light mustard on the top side. Give it a little rub in. Hit it with some more rub. And I go light because I layer on as I go. I'll make a base and I'll mop it on every 45 minutes while these dudes are smoking and add a little more rub. Just build layers of flavor and color on them. That's all they need to start. I'm going to let this pre-rub work in here and I'll come back and show you how I'm going to dust them the same way with The Barbecue Rub. All right, it's been about five minutes on the ribs. That's what the directions on this No Mercy says. Let it sit on the meat. You can see it just blends itself into the meat and it's starting to make them kind of tacky. That's the moisture coming out. Phil makes this at Top Chef Specialty Foods. They have all kinds of lines of rubs, but he also is a co-packer at tssfoods.com. If you want to check him out, if you're thinking about getting a rub put together, he'll help you. But what we're going to do now is come back with The Barbecue Rub. And it worked its way into the back side as well. And I'm just going to come on with a light coating on top of the other rub. And it's already tacky enough to have its own, it's made its own binder by pulling moisture out of it. So I don't have to worry about the mustard layer. I'm anxious to see side by side what, there's going to be a noticeable flavor profile change by using this first pre-rub. But you can see these other rubs, they've already started working. And I was talking about the appearance. As soon as you put it on and it starts bringing some of that moisture out of the meat, you already get the appearance before it ever hits any smoke. When you start out the product looking good like this, you know the end result is going to be where you want it. There we go. Next thing, we're going to get them on the cooker until it gets up to temp. All right, today I'm cooking these on a Yoder YS-480 pellet cooker. And it's a neat little unit. I'm using cherry pellets to give me some wood smoke. Just turn the thing on, set the temp where you want it. I'm cooking about 235 today. And I'm just going to put these ribs on the racks. Kind of got them separated here. I know which ones. These are the ones I put the pre-rub on. These are the ones with just the mustard and the barbecue rub. And we're going to let them roll about 45 minutes. I'll come out and baste them. And rock and roll. I just kind of use a little foil in here. Keep my area neat. I'm all about trying to keep it clean. Keep the cleanup part as easy as possible. If you'll do a little pre-work, it won't be so bad on you on the back end. But let's get the lid down and let these dudes do their thing. All right, these ribs have been on. This is the sacket-based. Been on right at two hours. And it's getting close to time to wrap them. But I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and moisten them up just a little bit more. Put just a little bit more rub on them. And they got really good color. They look really good. The smoke is just right. I like the way it's kind of not real strong on this Yoder. It just keeps it just a light thin smoke. That's exactly what you want. And the cherry pellets seem to be working really well. I like the temperature range. It's holding and recovers pretty quick too. Even today, the temperature's only like 44 degrees for the high today. But we're still rocking and rolling. These ribs will be ready to wrap in about 15-20 minutes. Let this go on a little bit. But you can see I dropped down to about 226, 225. It'll recover now and it'll be right back up. Just a few minutes, it'll shoot back up to 230 where I've got it set. But Yoder's doing its job. All right, here we go, wrapping ribs. You've seen me do it once. You've seen me do it 100 times. I always do the same process. A little baste, a little dry rub. Come back with the Magic Blue Bottle Parquet Margarine. This just gives it some richness. These ribs are still going to render out a lot of fat. That's why we wrap them in the foil. But the butter just adds another depth of flavor, a little more richness. Then we add the brown sugar and the honey, of course, to make them a little sweet. And our rub's giving us the kick with the heat and the spice and the color. That's all we do on that side. I flip them over. You can't really tell a difference between the two ribs, the way I cooked them. The ones that had the Phil Wingo's product on them, it was just like a pre-rub just to give it some flavor. But appearance-wise, they look the same. Always wrap when people ask me, do you go by time or temperature? I go by color. Once I get just the right amount of smoke on them, they get this mahogany look, that's when it's time to wrap them. That's what I always shoot for. Usually, it's about two hours. But, you know, occasionally, sometimes smoke might not be taking the way I want it to, and it takes a little bit longer. But that's it. Now I always pull off enough foil to make a good seal. So I'll fold that first layer over, increase it, flip it back over, and now they'll stay like this the entire time. I can flip that lip up, come back over, and I've created a total seal on these ribs. Nothing can escape. And that's wrapped ribs right there. 101. All right, these ribs have been on about an hour and 45 minutes wrapped, and I got the yoder set at about 235. It kind of fluctuates a little, five degrees above or below. But what I'm doing now is bringing them in and checking them for tenderness, because I don't want them to go too far. If you go straight two hours, it might be too far. And this is what they look like. You can see the juice that's cooked out. And what I'm looking for here is bone pull and separation. And I know these need to come off. You can see that some of the bones are starting to come through. On a KCBS rib, this is where you want it. It's got tenderness to where it would, if I went ahead and twisted this enough, it wouldn't take much to pop it right out. But I don't want it to be falling apart. Now maybe on an NBN rib, you would take it just a little bit farther, but this is going to have that one bite that a judge is looking for. Now I still have to glaze these and put them back on, so I'm going to pick up a little more tenderness. But this is right where I want them. And they look really good. Now we've got the ribs out of the foil, and all I'm doing is I've got a little bit of Killer Hog's barbecue sauce that we use, and I just gently mop it on them. Do both sides. I always start with the back side. I want to get flavors on both sides, of course. And I just use the same mop I was basting with, rinse it out, lightly brush it on. It's real simple. And I'll come in, I'll flip them. I get the bones good so they don't look dry. And then these will go back on the cooker for about another 30 minutes, just long enough to let this glaze, let this sauce sit. Okay, I've got the ribs sauced. Now I'm going right back to the grate with them, and I lowered my temp down to 225 because I'm going to let these sit on here about 30 minutes, and I don't want this sauce to burn. I'll keep an eye on it, but I just want about 225 is enough to really caramelize and set this sauce. I'll go ahead and close it down, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this Yoder Smoker. This thing was pretty slick. When I got up this morning, I just come out here, plugged it up, hit on, and set my temp at 235, and it kicks on. And it burns off these little pellets, and these are Barbecuer's Delight pellets. I'm using the cherry today. I probably put about 10 pounds in the hopper, and it's, you know, I still got to probably about half, so it's probably burned about five pounds of pellets today. But this Yoder is a real slick little grill so far, man. I love the smoke that it's put on these ribs. It gave them just the right color. This is the YS480, and it has 480 square inches of cooking. It also has another rack that goes in the top to give you multiple levels, so you could cook a little more on it. I removed it because I wasn't cooking anything up there today, but the aluminum foil is only on it just for protection, easy cleanup. But it'll come right back up to temp, and this thing is a pretty slick little grill, man. If you're ever looking for a pellet grill or never cooked on one, I highly recommend it. Give me a call or email, and I'll tell you all about them.