There are so many wonderful ways to cook pork. This is one of the many reasons pork and I get along so damned well. I used to be a pain in the ass purist and would beat any passers by in to my figurin’ that pork spare ribs needed to be smoked for approximately 5 hours before they were ‘correct’ or edible. Now I’m just a pain in the ass that enjoys good food. And I have to say that after Saturday’s grilled pork rib meal, both Mama and I enjoyed great food. However, it just doesn’t happen by mistake. There are a few finer points that needed to be adhered to so your meat makes your teeth smile.
Interested?

The catalyst for this meal was a very thoughtful gift from Laura at Cucina Testa Rossa. She and I have the same birthdate, down to the same year. And she was kind enough to have Williams Sonoma send me a tin of their Rib Rub. It smelled good and gave me the stremf to go find a rack of pork spares.
I found them easy enough. This time of year you can find them just about anywheres. Just make sure they’re good healthy and meaty lookin’. Nice bright white fat, no holes in the rib meat and good symmetry.
Once you’re home, wash and pat dry. Remove membrane across back with plyers and cloth towel, just like CB does it. Cut off flap of meat on same side of rack, that just never does taste good. Apply rub to ribs, the more you add the stronger the flavors will be. Since William Somoma’s rub is on the sweet side, I cut it with some rub that CB made and dropped off recently. Actually, I have no idea what it was he dropped off, it smelled and tasted good, so I put it on. I cut the William Sonoma rub because sugar can burn if your temp spikes in the pit. And with grilling, this can happen even to the best of us. Less sugar, less chance of black nasties.
The rubbed ribs can sit at the bottom of your fridge for up to 3 days. I let mine sit for a few hours. Get the chill off them before putting in grill.

Now here comes the tough part, starting the fire. Oh sure, you know all about it don’t you? Is that why your food comes out all black and raw? Or it takes 2 hours to grill a chicken leg? Shaddap. If you’re someone like Henry Joe or Chilebrown, you most certainly know what you’re doing. Otherwise? You need some practice grasshopper.
First off you need some fuel. I suggest mesquite or some charcoaled wood. You can use Hardwood Lump charcoal, but you’re not going to realize much flavors from such wood. The Hardwood Lump comes from milled or scrap hardwoods such as oak and whatever else is laying about. Sometimes you can see it’s been shaped in to crown molding or whatever. This is good for heat and cooking, but not much flavor. Also very good for small grills because it’s small in piece size.
See that chimney starter up there? That’s what you should be using. Not only can you get a fire going with just a few sheets of newspaper, but it accelerates the coals to grey time greatly. I finally paid the big money and bought the Weber brand. I’ve steered clear for years due to the price tag of 18 bux. But I finally took a closer look and it’s quite a bit larger and I can get a lot more wood in at one time. This speeds things up too. Plus since it made of thickerer metal, I figure it’ll last more than one season. So, maybe in the long run it doesn’t cost as much as I thought.
Don’t put any raw smoking wood in the chimney at this point, just charcoaled wood. Get it to just barely grey and dump it out at one side of your pit. This will vary depending on what type of grill you have. Do what makes sense or if you have a weber, read the instructions.

At this point add your smoking wood. Mine is a little huge, but that’s how I do it. Don’t close the lid. You need to get the wood lit and burning before you lay dowd the lid. If you shut it down and see BROWN smoke pouring out, that’s bad. That’s creosote and will make things taste bitter, open the lid for another 5 to 10 minutes. Stir the coals a bit to see how thing are going.
All vents full open all time.

Click on the image above for a larger version. You can easily see the meat on one side and the fire on the other.
The smells at this point are divine. The mesquite mingling with the hickory chuncks and the rub from the meat coming right through. Everyone should experience this before they die, it’s that special.
Once your fire has found its sweet spot, the exhaust will look like this:

Here’s a truth that whether you use a smoker or a grill is always true. If you cook the fat out of the meat, it will be dry and ruined. How do you cook the fat out of the meat? Too hot of a fire for too long or just basically cooking the meat too long. So, what you need to do is make damned sure your fire isn’t too hot. If you notice your indirect food getting too brown too quickly on the side that’s facing the fire? Pull the food and let the fire rest for 15 minutes, try again. DO NOT COOK THE FAT OUT OF YOUR MEAT. Please keep your senses piqued.
Considering the size of my hickory pieces, I didn’t need to add any smoking chips this time. But I’ll usually add those every 20 to 30 minutes for a piece of meat this size.
Oh man, the smell of fresh rubbed ribs hitting a real wood fire sends my eyeballs back. It’s so perfect, so pure it holds time still for me. I could get nothing else done that day and still be a success.
Maybe every 20-30 minutes you need the flip the ribs side to side and end to end. This way the cooking will be uniform. Do not forget this step, otherwise you’ll have pork jerky on one side, trust me.
It wasn’t long, less than 2 hours that I had these:

Are they burned? Nope. Check out the color of that exterior, a beautiful smoky red. Yup, those right there are perfect. Perfect for some, but Mama likes her’s sauced. I like them both ways, so off to the kitchen to whip up a little sauce. Some benign unflavored sauce, dollup or 4 of honey or molasses, fresh crushed garlic, fresh minced rosemary, juice from 1 lemon and a dose of the same rub used for the ribs. This sauce not only has nice contrasting sweet and citrussy flavors, but hugs the meat closely with the addition of the rub. And we get this:

This is where we go back to direct cooking with the elderly fire. Pour the sauce directly on the meat and swirl around with fork or spoon, turn over fire directly. Repeat this about 3 or 4 times until all sauce is nice and caramelly. I don’t use a brush because I find it disturbs the rub and previously applied sauce.

Slice and serve with cold Schlitz beer. How’d they taste? With the indirect grilling method you get a lot more pork flavors from the meat, smoky pork flavors that is. The juice ran down our fangers and the sauce was NOT over-powering the ribby love. The meat came from the bone with a slight tug from the teefs, juicy pork. Not a bad moment from front to back, heaven on a rib bone.
Biggles
Note added 8/9/2006:
I forgot to mention the differences in oxygen needs for those different fuels. Charcoal briquettes need the least amount of air and can really be abused as far as choking down the fire and related. Hardwood lump and mesquite really need the vents full open and try not to add cold fuel to an existing fire. Preburn it in the chimney before adding. And finally there’s the raw wood, either chips, chunks or hunks. These need the most air and really need to be looked after and made darned sure they’re going well before you close the lid to slowly roast your meat. Armed wtih this knowledge, you should do fine.