The BBQ McRib! | Chuds BBQ

What is going on everybody, welcome back to Chud's BBQ, my name is Bradley Robinson and today I'm going to show you how I made this beautiful, delicious, smoky, scratch made, BBQ-y, amazing, smoked McRib. That's right folks, we're using actual ribs, homemade bread, homemade pickles, all the works to see if this sandwich is actually worth making. Coming up. This is some meat. Love that sound. Pat them dry. And what I've got here is some baby back ribs, picked them up at my local grocery store, and when I was searching for these, I was trying to find the ones that were most narrow so they fit a little bit easier on this sandwich, but you could use whatever kind of rib you like because today we're tackling the McRib, which is a sandwich I've had several times and I don't hate it, but it's more of a BBQ pork burger than an actual rib sandwich, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I love a good pork burger, I should probably make a video about that actually. The one at Leroy and Lewis is fantastic. But a McRib made with actual ribs sounds really tasty and I've never done it before so I think today is the day. I was very close to going with some St. Louis cut ribs for this sandwich, I think they would work really well because they're a little fattier, but there's more cartilage and bones and things in those that I don't really feel like worrying about, where baby backs are just bone and meat, so should be a very easy cook. But just taking a look at these, not really much, I'm gonna trim up, maybe round off this end a little bit, square it up, sometimes there's something weird hanging off in the back right in this side. Just zip that off. I'm also gonna keep an eye out for little tiny baby bones because I don't want to miss any and bite into a bone once this sandwich is all said and done, but other than that, really not much to it. And this one is membrane removed, apparently, and this one still has it. If given the choice, I would say leave the membrane on, it's gonna make it a lot easier to take the bones out without this whole thing falling apart, but it should work out just fine either way. So now we're gonna get these things seasoned up, and today I'm gonna go with our new pork rub, works great on ribs, especially baby backs, and we're just gonna go on with a nice heavy coating. But this is gonna be covered in sauce in a sandwich at the end of the day, so really whatever you want to put on there would work out just fine, but this is a nice sweet pork rub, should give it some really good color as well. Pat it in. Flip them over. Top and bottom, and please, folks, don't forget the sides. Do love the color of this rub, and it smells great already. Beautiful! And these are looking pretty much perfect to me. Let's go ahead and fire up the pit. Holy hell. A little better. One of these days, I'm gonna make the McSnake Sandwich in my boot. And on the pit we go. Ooh, got a classic post-oak fire rocking in there, and it should be a pretty simple cook. Plumping this up, trying to make sure all those bones are as straight as possible, and get them cooking away. Get some nice smoke flavor on them, and we'll check back in on these in a couple hours. And while those cook, let's go ahead and bust out our McRib buns. Start them going into a stand mixer with some warm milk, our eggs, our yeast, and our sugar. Quick little mix, followed by our bread flour, salt, and some dough conditioner. And mix that till it all comes together. And once it's a nice shaggy dough, in we go with our softened butter. And now we're gonna mix this for like six to ten minutes. And just like that, a beautiful smooth dough ball has been formed. So, out it comes. So into a greased bowl we go. Lovely dough to work with. And now we're gonna cover this up and let it rise for the next hour to hour and a half. Looking nice and puffy. Out it comes. Boop. Punch all that air out. And now we're gonna portion it out into some 150 gram dough balls. Then we're gonna take all the seams and tuck it under and make a nice round ball, closing up any weird gaps on the underside. And give it the old roly poly to make sure it's in a nice tight ball. And once all balled up, we're gonna take these and start rolling them into some more McRib shaped buns. Make them as big as you want, I suppose. Something like that. And as always when you're trying to roll something out like this, if it's not working, just give these balls like 10, 15 to relax a little bit and they should roll out a lot easier. And then onto a Silpat lined baking sheet we go. And once all rolled out, now I'm gonna let these proof again covered in some greased plastic wrap for probably about 30 minutes. 30 minutes later, these are looking nice and poofy. Don't wanna get them too big. They're probably gonna rise more in the oven either way, but I'm gonna hit these with an egg wash because this is just a standard burger bun recipe, just a different shape. So we're gonna treat them very similarly. And once nicely egg washed, we'll go down and hit them with some sesame seeds for that classic McRib bun look. Good lord, it's hot today. And now something I'm surely gonna screw up. Bust out the old bread razor. We're gonna try and give it a nice clean slit right down the middle. Never been good at this. That oughta do. So now into a 375 degree oven these go for probably about 15 minutes or so until they're looking absolutely beautiful. I gotta tell you folks, I am beyond thrilled with how these came out. Especially for a bun that I have never made before, these are looking just absolutely beautiful. I mean, just look at the color on that thing. Love it. Good sesame seed cover. Again, my score could have been deeper, but I think that's gonna make for a really tasty McRib sandwich. And just look at them. They're so pretty. I'm gonna let them cool down. It's been about 4 hours on these ribs, so I'm gonna pull them off and give them a wrap. But they're looking very nice. Extremely hot. Ow. Good color on there. Darkened up quite a bit. And they certainly look darker on the camera. As always. Especially compared to this tinfoil, but. Beautiful color. Smell great. Rockin' around 180 internal. Maybe 190. And now it's time to wrap these up. And of course we're gonna add some barbecue sauce. My favorite sauce is some Leroy and Lewis BBQ sauce, but you can use whatever you like or make your own. And we're gonna get these all sauced up. Oh yeah. Should pair very nicely with that sweet rub and all the smoke we got on there. It's been a minute since I cooked some baby backs. We want these bad boys nice and saucy. Flip them over, meat side down. Sauce the back side as well. And now, wrap them up! And now back on the pit these go to cook in the foil, steam up a bit, and let all that sauce kind of cook on until they are nice and impossibly tender. Next up, let's go ahead and bust out some quick pickles. Starting by going into a jar with some garlic, and some dill. Yeah, we'll just go in with all of it. Some bay leaf, black peppercorns, some mustard seed, and some red chili flake. And then stuff our cucumbers right on in. Set that aside. And into a pot we're gonna make our brine, starting with three cups of vinegar. And one cup of water, some kosher salt, and some white sugar. And bring that up to a boil. And once up to a boil, over the pickles we go. With perfect preci- oh no, made a mess, there it is, always. This is gonna cook the pickles, softening them up immediately, and releasing all the flavors from the dill and the garlic. And as soon as it cools down, we'll be left with some beautiful homemade pickles. And just like that, after like another hour, maybe hour and a half, these ribs are pro- oh my god, that is hot. They're probing nice and tender, reading around 200 degrees, so off they come to rest down for a good little bit. They're looking nice and saucy. All right, after a nice little cool-down set, these are now rocking like 150 internal, and it's time to pull them out and see how we're looking. Looks like some beautiful saucy baby back ribs to me. But now we gotta go ahead and pull all the bones out of there, which should be pretty easy. Might destroy the back a little bit, but really we're just gonna get in there and kinda twist these bad boys until they come out perfectly clean. Gotta love that. Not much to it. And certainly a lot easier than deboning this when it was raw. Get out of there. Easy. And just like that, all bones removed. Still very tender, but there it is, a nice deboned rack of baby back ribs. And a bunch of clean bones. Make some pork stock out of that or something. It is a little bit long though, so I'm thinking probably just cut it to like right around there. Save the rest of this for a little snack or make a McRib burger. But yeah, that's a lot of meat. Holds together though, but just barely. Rack number two is coming right on out of there. Again, baby backs are perfect for this recipe. Also a great recipe for beginners, because you can pretty much just overcook any rack of ribs, debone it, and you're good to go. Up next, grab one of our absolutely beautiful buns. Get that sliced right in half. Beautiful structure on that. Incredibly light and squishy too. And of course, we're going to hit that with some butter and get it toasted off. Beautiful. And now it's time to build. So on the bottom bun here, we're going to go down with some more barbecue sauce. Also now, chudsbbq.com. And get that nice and spread out. We'll do some on the top bun as well. And now, the moment of truth. Lay down this big beautiful slab of baby back ribs. Nice fit. What happened back here? Must have came off with the bone. And to top that, we're going to go down with some of our freshly made pickles. Very simple sandwich to the McRib. Not much going on. But barbecue bread, pickles, and onions is really all you ever need. Beautiful. And then last but not least, some lovely white onion. Smells saucy, smells smoky. Pickles and onions, a classic accompaniment to any barbecue dish. And then, we top it all off. And there it is, folks. It's finally here. The Chuds BBQ version of the McRib. It was at this very moment, I thought to myself, why did I make two racks of ribs? I really didn't think it through, but I definitely can't even put down one of these by myself. And I made a concerted effort to not make this thing too gigantic, and here we are. Must say though, I'm loving how it looks. All the little individual rib holes in there. Not the most attractive thing to say out loud, but homemade pickles, that bread just looks so good. Let's go ahead and slice it up. Definitely didn't leave any bones in there. There it is. The pork rib sandwich. The McChud... The Chuddy Mc... It's a McRib. Let's eat it. That's a behemoth of a sandwich. I mean, come on. It's so meaty. Wow. That is so much better than I thought it was going to be. Which really shouldn't be surprising, you know? It's just a rack of baby back ribs with some fantastic rub and sauce on it. With pickles and onions on a beautiful homemade bun. That's not to like here. That's actually really good. Pork is nice and tender. The pickles are super flavorful. The onions are a very welcome addition. Saucy but not too saucy. And of course that bread is just phenomenal. You know it is. That's a damn good bite of food right there. Everything seems to be in perfect balance here. You got smoky meat that's cut by the pickles. The richness of the meat is cut by the pickles and the onions. The bread is squishy and fresh, but not too much bread. The sauce is sweet, but it's also got some vinegar tang to it. A little bit of kick from all the black pepper. Sweet, not too sweet. I mean, honestly, there's nothing I would change about this. Except maybe get rid of the flies. Brooke, would you like to try a McRib? I do. I made a whole sandwich just for you. And I realized it was too gigantic, so you get this half. But look at this beast. There's no way I'm finishing this. I mean, disclaimer, I haven't actually had the real thing from McDonald's, but I bet this probably tastes better. I would hope so. Oh, you're an upside-down sandwich eater? Yeah, the bugs are going crazy today. I'm being assaulted. Mmm, that's good. Meaty. Mmmhmm. It's tender. It's smoky. But it's not pulled pork. You know what I mean? Mmmhmm. Like, I can see an actual reason why someone would want to make this sandwich. Yeah. Mmm, it's good. And I like the little contrast with the pickles and onions. Mmmhmm. My pickles are a little less translucent green and incredibly salty, though. I like it. Which is nice, because this is a pretty rich sandwich, as is. So you're telling me you're not going to eat a sandwich with half a rack of ribs on it? No. I might. I mean, I'm doing some pretty good damage on this half. It might hurt me if I try, but these two bites are really good. Yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to get a McRib again. It's not quite pulled pork, but it's very much approaching that. Yeah. So what did you just pull the bones out of it? Yeah. And left everything? See all the bone holes? Yeah. I mean, it looks... It's got that, like... I do have an idea, where I want to take a rack of ribs like this, take the bones out, and then pipe cream cheese or something weird in there. Oh, don't do that. I just want to pipe the bone hole. No? Not a good video idea? I think I'm done with this sandwich now. Well, I'm definitely going to finish my half, but before I go, I think it's time for the official taste test. All right, y'all. And that is it. That is how you make some absolutely fantastic, smoky, scratch-made McRibs at home. And this is a video that I've been putting off since, like, 2020, when I started this channel, because it really kind of seems like a gimmicky internet guy thing to do. But then again, that was before I made my own bread and pickles and all that kind of stuff. So now I guess it is a little more in line with the current direction of Chud's Barbecue. And honestly, now that I've made it, I can really see the value in it, you know? Like I was saying, the texture of that pork was perfect for a sandwich. It was so much different than if I was to just use a pork loin or pulled pork or something like that. Pretty quick and easy to cook, too, you know? Those baby back ribs only took like four or five hours. And you pair that with some homemade pickles, onions, and some amazing bread, and you're going to have a good bite no matter what you do. And I'm definitely going to do this again at some point, and I highly recommend you do the same. But all that being said, if you enjoyed this video, let me know by hitting that subscribe button. Let YouTube know by dropping a like on this video. If you give this recipe a try for yourself, be sure to tag me on Instagram at Chud's Barbecue. I love to see what y'all are cooking. Big shout out to all the Patreon members. Thank you for supporting Team Chud and allowing me to keep making all these videos. And until the next time I see you, please, go cook something outside. Peace!