Written: 1/2/2023
Notes for charcoal smoked St. Louis ribs with an apple theme pulling from a variety of online recipes and ideas
What
Charcoal-smoked St. Louis ribs
Ingredients
1 rack of St. Louis ribs, mustard, rice wine, soy sauce, apple juice, 1–2 apples, applewood chips, spices
Spices: coarse/Kosher salt, fresh-cracked peppercorn, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, dill weed/pickle seasoning
Foil or peach paper
Time
Prep, Overnight, 3–5 hours in smoker
Steps
- Combine the spices in a bowl: coarse salt, pepper, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika
- Very important: remove the connective tissue lining the bone side of the ribs: Slide a butter knife under the film on a bone. Carefully wiggle until you can grasp the film and then pull. It should come right off cleanly.
- Cut the rack into 2 if you want (you can also season them differently if desired)
- Add soy sauce, rice wine, and mustard, spreading evenly on both sides
- Rub the combined spices into the meat on both sides
- Very lightly, sprinkle a hint of dill/pickle seasoning
- Use plastic wrap to tightly bind the rack
- Refrigerate overnight
Smoking day
- Take the meat out and let it get to room temperature
- Optionally, soak some applewood or pecan chips (there is plenty of argument about the functionality of this on the internet)
- Prepare the smoker (my set up is quite involved, so it’s a good time killer)
- Start the charcoal in the chimney starter (don’t use lighter fluid)
- Finish prepping the thermometers, tongs, and workspace
- Cut the fresh apples into pieces
- When the charcoal is ready, pour it into the firebox and add a few chips and 1 or 2 apple slices. Yes, apple slices! (apple gives off this neato perfume when it burns)
- Let the temperature get to be around 250F or so and put the ribs bone side down at the highest point (I’m using a vertical offset smoker)
- Ribs can be smoked anywhere between 225F to 300F and they’ll still end up great. Faster cook at higher temps, slower at lower temps (duh.)
- Note: When cooking with charcoal, bigger chunks are good for longer even burning, and smaller chunks give high heat faster. Adjust according to your cooking goals
- About 30 minutes in and at 60 minutes throw in your wood chips and apple pieces. Remember that you can add smoke flavor, but you can’t take it away, so be wary of over-smoking your meat. I personally don’t like a lot of smoke flavor, so that’s it for the chips at this step for the rest of the cook.
- About 1.5 to 2 hours in (depending on amount of meat), remove the ribs. They should have a nice bark on them at this point.
- Brush on or spritz some apple juice all over the meat
- Using peach paper (or foil), wrap the ribs
- Place them back in the smoker
- Add more charcoal to maintain the temperature and any remaining chips or apple pieces
- After 1–2 hours, do the bounce/bend test: if you give the ribs a nice shake and they start to crack, then they’re done. If not, then brush on some more apple juice and let ’em keep cooking.
- Good internal temp for the meat is, apparently, 180–200F
- When they’re done, let the ribs sit for a little and then serve
What happened to me is that it was getting dark, the air temperature was rapidly dropping, and I didn’t want to start up another batch of charcoal, so I took them inside and put them in the convection toaster oven at 275 for an hour. The end product was really, quite good. I like subtle flavors, and this was subtle on every level: lightly sweet from the apple juice, perfect hint of smoke, no overpowering spices, a good bark crust despite the apple juice and peach paper. No need for BBQ sauce! The only thing that could have made it better was cooking at the higher temperatures the whole time (except I had other meats in there, too) and putting enough charcoal in there to achieve that.
I love apples!