Tim McKirdy: Sother.

Sother Teague: Tim.

TM: A regional argument disguised as a cut of meat — or many cuts of meat. Barbecue ribs.

ST: Let's go. Pork barbecue ribs. I know already that this resonates with both of us pretty seriously, so we're gonna get into it on this episode.

TM: Yep, and we like to talk often and kick things off with personal and professional experiences. I'll just share for the listeners that you have been a big part of my own personal experience with cooking this very particular cut of meat — or cuts of meat that we'll get into. We will decide on one. But I've always loved grilling ever since I lived in Argentina. I wasn't fortunate enough to have somewhere to grill myself until moving into my current apartment here in New York, and I went for things that they wouldn't be cooking in Argentina. That's when I really fell down the rabbit hole of smoking ribs and smoking longer cuts of meat. And that's where you've been an invaluable resource for me since day one.

ST: Oh, man, happy to do it. My professional relationship with specifically smoked pork ribs is pretty minimal. I've built numerous smokers for establishments that I worked for, but they weren't barbecue houses, so we weren't smoking pork ribs necessarily. But similarly, when I got my apartment in New York City that has a small backyard, the very, very first thing I bought before I bought a couch — I didn't even have a couch — I bought a grill with a smoke box on the side so that I could get back into the backyard and do this. At that point I'd lived here for just over 20 years and never had a backyard, never had space to. Hadn't grilled myself in 20 years.

TM: And there's something about the whole thing, isn't there, that's very therapeutic — or, if you find therapy in cooking, a project like this, something you can geek out on, but also something that's very easy to get pretty okay results with, too, right?

ST: You can drill down on the minutia of everything we're about to talk about today, or you can just coast into it and experiment, relax, and have a beer. Either way, the results are gonna be fulfillment and delicious food. Now, you wanna really drill down, and we can get some real delicious food.

TM: Maybe we might even explore at some point — and I'm just thinking about this right now — like, essential tips for the home smoker. Equipment or things like that. If you're gonna spend a little bit of money, this thing's really gonna up your game. We'll get into that. When I was sat thinking about the planning for this on my side, I was struck by how many related episodes we've done, both recently and looking further back. We'll get into some of the origins that tie very closely to Jerk Chicken. But also, in format, this is kinda gonna be similar to our Wings episode, right? This isn't a dish that can't exist without booze, but we can probably interpret some regional approaches and apply booze for the sauced version of barbecue ribs.

ST: Oh, we're gonna. I mean, I'm gonna.

TM: We know this from Jerk Chicken — booze isn't non-negotiable for you even if it wasn't, you know, classically. And yeah, I think it's gonna play a similar role today.

ST: Listen, I don't just find this part of my ethos for the show. I kind of find this how I cook in general. I'm gonna reach for some kind of booze to bring another layer of complexity to the final product. Kind of across the board. When I'm in the kitchen cooking, when I'm in my backyard cooking, when I'm at the restaurants cooking — there's booze around.

TM: Absolutely. And that is one of the beauties of it as well. Get that cooler full, folks. And if you don't have a cooler, order the cooler so that by the time you're done with the episode, that's on its way and you can start. That's one of the definite essential smoker pieces of equipment.

ST: A cooler? Yeah, you gotta have a cooler. Full of beer. Well, full of beer, but also you need — I like to have one hanging around so that I can wrap and rest inside of a cooler. It's an insulated box, you know? You can obviously do this by wrapping and resting inside your oven, which is also an insulated box, but that's back inside. And we're outside. Let's stay outside.

TM: Multiple coolers then. Well, shall we do it? Shall we get into the origin of barbecue and how barbecue then relates to ribs?

ST: Well, I think I just wanted to kinda define what we're doing first, right? Smoked barbecue pork ribs are cooked low and slow over wood smoke until the meat becomes tender, richly flavored, and lacquered with spice, smoke, fat, and — often, but not always — sauce. That's what I wanna talk about. Often, but not always.

TM: Absolutely. And that really leans into those regional approaches. Are you walking into a Kansas City smokehouse, or somewhere in central Texas, maybe Carolina? A lot of really interesting things for us to get into. We're gonna basically begin our origin story here with where we left off with Jerk Chicken in many ways — or also where we started, right? Those same Taino people that we spoke about in that last episode — their word is where barbecue derives. It was barbacoa. And it actually more than anything referred to the framework of sticks they built over hot coals for slow cooking meat — and not just even meat. They would be smoking other things as well. Preservation, cooking. It could even lean to materials that they're using to build other things as well, right? That word appears in Spanish print by 1526. First mentioned in English, the barbecue derivative, 1661. And then by 1775, we get a real reference of "a hog dressed whole in the West Indian fashion" when referring to barbecue.

ST: In the West Indian fashion. Okay.

TM: 'Cause oftentimes a lot of those, you know, the colonies were described by many as the West Indies. Moving from there in the Caribbean to the south of the US — Spanish and British settlers bring pigs to the south in the 17th century, so before that whole hog mention that we're talking about then. But worth very much noting that at this time, barbecue means whole hog. Now at this time as well, pre-Civil War, we're cooking in earth-dug pits, we're using hardwood coals, we're low and slow — so it's very much like the Taíno preparation. But a few other things that are going on at this time.

ST: Hit me.

TM: Pit masters originally meant an elderly enslaved Black cook who would oversee the pits at white events. Then you would have younger cooks around them who learned the craft. So we're talking about this experience of passing on that knowledge — and that's gonna be a vital part of the story for sort of later on. And at this time, we're talking enslaved Africans and enslaved Black individuals combining their own seasoning and cooking knowledge with those indigenous pit cooking techniques. So these are the first American pit masters. 17th century. Once again, at this time we're talking about the whole hog, right? So how do we go from the whole hog to the cuts that we're gonna talk about today?

ST: I mean, I think the jump is largely gonna be the wealthy versus the not wealthy, right? The people with more money are gonna get the more desirable cuts, not just the whole animal.

TM: So that's usually the case. This is something different, and it refers to commerce and industry. For barbecue ribs to be a thing, we need a cheap, plentiful cut, and the industrial meatpacking industry created one almost by accident. So in 1854, in Cincinnati, known by some as Porkopolis — due to the fact that it was the real center of hog butchery and distribution — spare ribs, which is one of the cuts we're gonna get into, they did not fit into the square salt barrels that were used to ship the pork at the time. Cincinnati being on the Ohio River, this is pre-refrigeration, so any cut of meat is kind of dry-brined — sorry to say that — but it's transported in salt for preservation. Because those spare ribs didn't fit into it, the meatpackers literally threw them into the river, discarded them, or they would give them away during hog killing season. So any boarding housekeeper or anyone running an establishment, people could literally turn up to the butcher with a basket, and they would give you the ribs for free at no cost because they're like, "We have no use for this, and we cannot transport it." They couldn't take a blade and cut them to fit. And I suspect it's one of those things that we see often in cooking too, where it's like we used to discard this because we haven't even thought about how to cook this because we cannot transport it, right? And it's not in the way that we butcher things down.

ST: It's funny that this also kind of translates to the pork butt — which is named after the bucket. The bucket is called a butt, and that's the same sort of vessel that they shipped this cut of meat in as well. Because it's not from the rear end of the animal.

TM: Exactly. That's one of those weird, erroneous things — or the false friends when it comes to the name, right? You think you understand what it is, but it's actually almost the opposite. In fact, it was German immigrants in Cincinnati who were the first to systematically cook these cutoffs and build a little bit of a tradition about it. Fast-forward about 25 years to the 1870s — the rise of mechanical ice making and refrigerated railroad cars let packers ship meat coast to coast year-round in a way that did not require those vessels. So suddenly you see there's a demand. There's a community who are cooking these things and making delicious things with it, and also now we can transport it. Boom, let's sell it. By 1900, Chicago had become the hog butcher for the world, and ribs were available in any city with a rail connection to them. So it starts with our barbecue, our cooking technique — low and slow, originally over that framework of sticks. Next, we need the cut to emerge. We need the transformation from whole hog to ribs. Finally, we need the people to cook this, and to cook this in a delicious way. And so this is the point at which Black southern pit cooking meets the industrial cut, and thus commercial barbecue ribs are born. Between 1910 and 1970, six million Black Americans roughly moved from the rural South to industrial cities — your Chicagos, your Kansas City, Detroit, St. Louis — places that have this tradition that we very much attribute to barbecue ribs. And then, yeah, that's kind of the story of barbecue ribs. I've got a few people and places and names here and there we might get into in the luminary section, but that is the evolution of whole hog to barbecue ribs.

ST: I mean, it's pretty fascinating to me. And it's great to see how it evolved and then to know where we live in it now, right? 'Cause you brought us up to close to 1900, and then somewhere in the late 1800s is kinda when some of the founding fathers of barbecue came along, so that's right when that was all happening. Pretty fascinating to see.

TM: And speaking of which, very likely someone who you might have in your notes as well here — the year is 1908, and the name is Henry Perry. Familiar?

ST: That's who I was gonna talk about, yeah.

TM: Why don't you share about Henry Perry for us?

ST: Yeah, I just have a brief bit about him. He was often called the father of Kansas City barbecue. In the early 1900s, he sold smoked meats wrapped in a newspaper from an alley stand, and Kansas City rib culture traces heavily back to him and has never really waned from his techniques and his methodology. It's only been sharpened and gotten better.

TM: And then not only that, what we also have is, again, continuing this lineage of pit masters — some of his employees go on to open establishments that become synonymous with the city and are known and celebrated to this day. One of them is Charlie Bryant, another is George Gates. And I believe Charlie Bryant's establishment is now known by his brother's name, who took it over from him at one point — Arthur Bryant, I wanna say. And he was a gentleman who gets a shout-out, calling back here to our Wings episode — Calvin Trillin, in his books. You know, the Walt Whitman of American eats that we went through. He starts his book American Fried with — I forget the exact phrasing now — but he's like, "The best restaurants in the world are to be found in, obviously, Kansas City." Obviously. And Bryant's is one of those places that he puts among those later on, where he's like, "There's four of the best barbecue joints in the world, and they're here."

ST: I'm pretty sure, just a little shout-out to our friends at Till Death in Kansas City — the speakeasy in the basement of an active funeral home — they have a custom-made bitters that's a barbecue bitters, and I'm pretty sure it's modeled after the one you just named, Gates. So they have their Gates Till Death Barbecue Bitters that they use in their Old Fashioned.

TM: That's very cool. And the fact that you've reminded me of that, and knowing that they're big fans of the show — it's Arthur Bryant, I just wanna say. I can't remember what they said, but yeah. Knowing that they're big fans of the show, now immediately I'm feeling under more pressure as we have some Kansas City loyal listeners here. But no, great folks, and we appreciate their backing of the show since day one. Sother, that's our origin story. How about now our culinary luminaries? Do you have some quotes or any individuals you wanna highlight that have really had an impact on this dish or had something really thoughtful to say about it?

ST: Yeah, I got a few. And I'm gonna save one of them for last because I don't consider him to be a real voice in this particular category, but he had something very pleasant to say about the category. Jim Harrison, who wrote The Raw and the Cooked, which is a book that has a lot of impact — plus he wrote a book called The Really Big Lunch. He said, "The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for your smoked meat to cook." I thought that was just a funny place to begin. Not rib specific, but reflective of the barbecue culture and indulgence and the celebration that is smoking meats. Daniel Vaughn. Do you know about this guy? He's the world's first and only dedicated barbecue editor at Texas Monthly magazine. He's known from his online moniker, The Barbecue Snob, and he's a leading authority on Texas barbecue. His reviews are like — what's his name? — Portnoy, David Portnoy about pizza. This guy makes or breaks barbecue guys. He frequently argues that ribs are the purest expression of pit control because they expose every flaw in temperature management and smoke handling — because this whole dish is all about the technique of cooking. Let me see. I got two more. Pat Martin, who wrote a book called Life of Fire, has described whole hog barbecue and ribs as a conversation between fire, smoke, meat, and time. So again, many of these quotes kinda go back to the technique itself. And then the final one that I have for you is Anthony Bourdain, who famously said, "Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start."

TM: What a way with words. And what a way with words all of these folks have, actually. I think that's a really nice little collection of musings.

ST: Well, I think there's something quite romantic about cooking. I think it's even more compounded when you're cooking in a low and slow method like this. It's sexy, it's romantic, it's beguiling, it's attractive. So I think there's musings and sort of fanciful ways of thinking about it.

TM: And I think perhaps most of the romance in cooking, or for certain people — certainly myself — comes from the idea of transformation. Whether that's taking water, flour, and starter and creating sourdough bread over multiple days, or — or years — exactly. Or the braises we've done, the bourguignon — marinating the meat, then slow and low, and then. Or simply smoking something and just seeing the before and after, right? It's a project and it's transformation, and I think that's the real magic for a lot of folks.

ST: Yeah, and I say it all the time in my daily life — my favorite parts of cooking, my favorite style I should say of cooking, is time intensive. Not necessarily activity intensive, but I like slow process. I like to cure meats. I like to smoke things and cook them slowly. I like to make sausages. All the things that kinda take a while. And I don't think I've ever put the same fine line on it that you just did, but yeah — transforming this thing from whatever I got when I got it to whatever I'm gonna finally enjoy.

TM: I mean, I start making my fruitcakes in September every year for December. That's for the following December. Sometimes. I still have one left from two years ago.

ST: Those things will only get better with time.

TM: I hope so.

ST: I'm bringing it over next time.

TM: Three names here just to really briefly shout out on my end as well. I think at least two of them will be very well known to folks who take an interest in this category. But I wanna also point folks who aren't or who are new to it, or who are like myself, who didn't grow up with this. Number one, Charlie Vergos —

ST: That's not a name I know.

TM: — the proprietor of Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous.

ST: Oh, I do know this guy. Rendezvous is in — Alabama?

TM: Memphis.

ST: Oh, Memphis. Okay. But it's in an alley. Yeah, I know the place.

TM: Exactly. They got a neon sign. I've seen it. Memphis born to Greek immigrant parents. In 1948, he transformed a basement off of a downtown Memphis alley into a ham and beer joint. Ham and beer. And then turned an old elevator shaft — or coal chute, depending on the source and who you believe — into a smoker.

ST: It had to be a coal chute, 'cause if it was an elevator, how are the people getting up and down now? Just the stairs?

TM: An old one. Might have been like a dumbwaiter thing.

ST: How old? When did elevators get invented? You're talking 1940 here? Come on. 1948.

TM: Yeah, probably. Of course. Yeah, it makes sense. But I'm just pointing out that both versions are out there.

ST: Sure. I don't mean to derail you. But I will say, just real quickly — I probably said it sometime during the show, but you can make a smoker out of anything. I made a cold smoker out of a cardboard box, and I made a hot smoker out of a United States postal Jeep.

TM: I made a cold smoker out of a fridge freezer that we found on the street in Argentina to make our bacon for the restaurant, and the incredible thing was we were gonna build this design — and the freezer, the thing was upside down —

ST: There's your box.

TM: — and it was perfect for what we needed.

ST: There's your box on the bottom.

TM: And we walked out of a service on Saturday night, and we'd been deep in conversation about this, and we're like, "Wait." There it is.

ST: Like a moonbeam cast upon us.

TM: Again, so romantic. But worth noting as well that Vergos's establishment and what he did there helped define Memphis barbecue. He built a dry rub from his father's Greek chili spice, plus added a few other things — so that's the kind of Memphis style. Shall we actually just at this point stop and define some of the regional different styles of barbecue very quickly? I mean —

ST: Yeah, sure. Where do you wanna begin?

TM: Well, we're in Memphis right now, so — a primary, a dry rub, thin vinegar mop applied during cooking, sauce on the side or sauce absent, cooked over hickory.

ST: Hickory, yeah, 'cause it'll be a little bit more spicy. My favorite is North Carolina style, which is a whole hog style of barbecue itself, but again — a thin vinegar mop, maybe sometimes with a mustard sauce.

TM: Next — and we mentioned again, Kansas City — very sauce-forward, thick, sweet, molasses and tomato, hickory and oak. Probably — but I don't wanna get ahead of ourselves — the best candidate for booze today. But we shall see.

ST: Sure, but I would also say Kansas City is — they're known not just for the fact that they have that sauce that you just described. They're known for — most other barbecue places are known for how they prepare and what. Like I just said, North Carolina, whole hog specifically, right? Kansas City — they're the loose cannon. They'll put anything on the smoker. Sausages, pork, beef, chicken, but always with that sauce. If they're gonna sauce it, it's got that sauce you described.

TM: And then finally Texas.

ST: Brisket, it's beef all the time. Short ribs from time to time. Again, not saucy — more reliant on the rub.

TM: Because they really prize that bark. Now, I'm sure you can get pork ribs down there, but again —

ST: You can. Like you said, beef is more of the go-to. We've drifted a little bit off of specifically — just barbecue — yeah, we're just talking about barbecue. But I love to point out that I think one of the most unique outliers is Alabama. Alabama does slow-cooked smoked chicken, and then their barbecue sauce is mayonnaise-based, so it's called Alabama white. And that's — crazy. It's not crazy, but it's one of the most unique ones. I do find it kind of curious, you know, I'm from Florida, and even as you mentioned at the top of the show, the sort of migration of this technique came up through Florida. But Florida doesn't really have its own sort of style of barbecue.

TM: That's odd.

ST: Yeah, interesting. We're left out.

TM: Then fancy that, Florida doing things differently.

ST: It begrudges me to claim Florida as my home state. Begrudges, is that right? I don't, I don't like it is what I'm saying.

TM: Well, two of those final culinary luminaries — and I definitely think would be considered luminaries within the barbecue world — Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin. Franklin's. First pitmaster ever to win a James Beard Award.

ST: That's cool. I didn't know that. Good for him.

TM: And again, this is gonna be a Texas-forward space, although you can find recipes from him online for pork ribs specifically. They're out there. I believe this guy's also on, like, Masterclass, that app, and stuff like that, so of course he's covered it. And then otherwise, Rodney Scott. Absolute legend. Born in Philadelphia, family moved down to South Carolina when he was an infant, and he started cooking whole hogs at his family's Scott's Barbecue. He was on Bourdain's episode. And in 2018, won the James Beard Foundation Best Chef Award for the Southeast — the first Black pitmaster to win a James Beard Chef Award.

ST: That's pretty cool. He is an incredibly influential modern pitmaster and a major ambassador for live fire Southern barbecue traditions in general — and couldn't be more excited to see the things he does. However, since the show is dropping when it's dropping, it'd be remiss to mention that the company that has backed and sponsored him to build all his spaces has gone through some kind of crazy upheaval, and overnight several of his places closed this past month.

TM: Oh, that's a real shame.

ST: He has vowed to bring them back because it wasn't his doing. The company is a hospitality company that has literally dozens of locations, and something went wrong with their finances. They had to button up almost everything, and he got folded into that mess. It's a real shame to think that a guy who has really accomplished a whole lot to be an ambassador for this specific style of cooking in general — and as you just said, has accolades like a James Beard Award — is now facing this whole kerfuffle.

TM: Yeah, that is a real shame, and that's something to take a minute and lament. If you wanna see his impact as well, I'm 99.9% sure that when Chef's Table on Netflix did a barbecue offshoot miniseries, pretty sure there's an episode about him.

ST: I think there is, yeah.

TM: 'Cause I remember them building the pits and doing the mop, and it's just incredible. But again, these are all notable people. These are all many different branches to this different story which can go really far and really wide. We're gonna have to reel it back in a little bit now — focus again on barbecue ribs, 'cause there's still a lot to cover right there.

ST: Well, I think one of the best things about barbecue is the time that it takes to do it means that you get to — again, it's pretty passive work at that point. You're just managing the fire, which gives you plenty of time to sit around and chat with your friends.

TM: Break bread, open a cold one, chill out, have a good time. Sother, we're gonna take a quick break now, and then we've got your favorite — the non-negotiables.

***

TM: All right, we are back in the studio, Sother. Non-negotiables. Hit me with number one.

ST: I mean, number one — I'm gonna go down your route. I'm trying to usurp your route these days. Low and slow cooking. You can't rush ribs. That's it. 100%. Bold letters in my notes: "You cannot rush ribs."

TM: You cannot rush it, because this is a dish both in terms of the cooking technique but also the thing we are cooking — it's about temperature, not time. Time is the result. Time is whatever happens. It's all about the temperature, right?

ST: Which is quite frustrating for the home cook, I know. This means that you may miss your dinner target time by an hour. Maybe more sometimes. But you can't rush them, and that's just the bottom line. We're gonna cook it around 225, 275. I like to kind of split the difference and go right at 250. But hovering in that zone the whole time.

TM: And then the outcome temperature that you're looking for, just while we're talking temps here?

ST: I wanna bring it up to 190.

TM: Perfect. And we can maybe get into some of the science of that in a little bit. I would also say as well, we want, ideally, lump charcoal as the heat source — and wood for flavor. And we can get into different —

ST: That was my number two, wood smoke.

TM: Cool, I had that in heat and fuel, so that's two there for us. Do you wanna talk about woods real fast?

ST: Yeah, sure thing.

TM: Before that actually — how about what's the difference between hardwood lump charcoal and briquettes?

ST: Briquettes are like — how would I explain this? For the layperson, think about hardwood as from a chunk of hardwood, like your true mahogany desk. Briquettes are made from your IKEA desk. They're like mashed-together bits of wood that have been turned into charcoal. So they're gonna burn a little bit faster and a little bit hotter, but they're gonna be gone quicker as well.

TM: They burn more consistently 'cause they're consistent in size, but also yeah, like you said. And then wood is the flavoring, right?

ST: Wood is the flavor. I mean, obviously your seasonings are gonna be the flavor too, but wood is gonna have a humongous impact on what your outcome is.

TM: We said hickory as the Memphis default. Kansas City too, I would imagine. That's your classic American barbecue wood flavor, right?

ST: I think Middle America, right. But Texas is known for oak and mesquite, right? Which are gonna have a more medium intensity, earthy, whereas hickory's a little bit kinda almost spicy. Apple or cherry wood, which has come up before for us — love both of those. Apple and cherry are fruits, and so the wood imparts a little bit of a fruitiness of the fruit that they are from. Orchard apple or the dark parts of cherry are gonna come through in the smoke.

TM: And that might also give us a perception of sweetness as well, right? Fruit, our brains often process as sweet for many reasons, so that might add to that aspect of the dish.

ST: Right. The way I think about that is, when I tell people, "We think of cinnamon as sweet because most of the things we enjoy cinnamon with involve sugar." But if you just bite down on a cinnamon stick, you will realize right away it is not sweet.

TM: Or if you try and do that stupid cinnamon challenge people were doing a few years ago. Those are all the ones I have. Well, no — okay, two more. I got mesquite and pecan.

ST: Pecan, nutty, right? So it's gonna bring literally a nutty flavor to the aroma of the smoke. And aroma is 90% of flavor, so you're gonna get that nutty aroma in your final product. And we talked about mesquite already at the top with Texas, right?

TM: Oh, I was saying hickory.

ST: Oh, you said hickory. Sorry.

TM: Hickory for Kansas City. Mesquite — yeah, maybe too aggressive for pork. Maybe more of a beef one.

ST: But if we're talking about the woods itself, we also need to really talk about — like I said, low and slow. You don't wanna see white smoke pouring out of your smoker. That's the — just because there was a piece of meat on the counter when your house burned down doesn't mean your meat was smoked. That's gonna be sooty. You need to make sure that you're cooking at a temperature where the smoke is wispy and sort of a pale bluish color coming out of the smoker. And I've mentioned, I think on the jerk episode, almost every time that I am in the backyard smoking something, I'll take a little clip on, a video of just the smooth, pale smoke oozing out of every opening in my grill to show people, like, this is it. This is what you're looking for. You don't wanna see billowing smoke. You wanna see a wisp of smoke so that it's flavoring, but not covering your product with soot.

TM: Fantastic.

ST: Next non-negotiable. Well, we haven't even said it, but we wanna have ribs — of pork in this case, for this episode. There are other ribs, but we're doing pork today.

TM: And that is an even bigger deep dive than the wood, so we shall save that one for the next section, I believe. Okay, let's dig into this. One of the things that's a non-negotiable for me, though, related to our ribs — you gotta take the membrane off. You have to pull off the membrane.

ST: I see a lot of guys say you don't have to, just score it or whatever, and I disagree. It's gonna be an unwelcome mouthfeel when you're eating the final product. That membrane doesn't break down all the way. And some people say, "Oh, if you score it in a crosshatch style so it's just some little diamonds on the back of your rib, it doesn't really matter, and it'll add some texture." But it's not a texture that I want in this case. And the fact that it's so easy to remove — literally takes 10 seconds per rack. I don't know why people skip it. It takes just as long to score it as to remove it. Just remove it.

TM: And this is gonna be — it's the silver skin that's on the bone side of the rack. I believe the technical term is peritoneum. It's elastin, not collagen, which is the fat in the pork which is gonna render down as we're cooking and keep it juicy and moist and beautiful. Also — and again, this might be pseudoscience — but some people say if you leave that membrane on, you're inhibiting smoke penetration.

ST: Yeah, 'cause like you just said, elastin, it's sort of elastic in nature, and the smoke isn't — it's not porous. That's why they say score it. But then you still got this thing on there. The taste is fine. It is the texture that is off-putting to me. Remove the membrane. It takes no time.

TM: And you're literally gonna — you can use a bit of kitchen paper, you can use a butter knife, you can get one of the fingers under there. Or if it's tougher — and again, it depends on the cut, that we'll get into — I have seen people use a meat hook too online, which felt like a little bit like overkill, but they were rocking it well.

ST: All right. Was that that jerk motion we talked about with Jerk Chicken?

TM: But with the hook, and I'm like, "Okay, this is pretty cool." And you get that satisfying tearing sound as you're pulling it off.

ST: I mean, I just use the edge of a paper towel. All you gotta do is fold a piece of paper towel so you've got some grip. It's your friction coefficient. And you can snatch it right off there. It takes no time. Next non-negotiable for you.

TM: I think we have to make a rub. I was hoping that's where you'd go. Talk to us about a sort of universal base that everyone should have on hand, and then they can take in whatever direction they want.

ST: At the bare minimum you're gonna need salt, sugar — probably light brown sugar in this scenario. You're gonna need some cayenne pepper. You're gonna need some paprika. You're gonna need some garlic and onion powders. And did I say black pepper?

TM: And it's gonna be pepper to salt, two to one ratio, right? As your base. And then build from there. And you mentioned this on Jerk too, and I was listening back to that episode, and it made so much sense to me as well. When you buy a rub, you don't know the proportion. So everything is just guesswork. But if you know, "Okay, I have my two-to-one base of pepper to salt, and then I'm adding this flavor on top of it" — you're doing so so that — I mean, the thing that you have to keep in mind is the salt, and keep under control.

ST: And the sugar.

TM: Salt and sugar. Yeah. Those are the things that can literally make this inedible. So yeah, gotta have a dry rub.

ST: Gotta have a dry rub.

TM: That brings us to maybe one decision here — or maybe it's a non-negotiable for you. Do you use an adhesive?

ST: A binder is what we call it, right? For pork ribs I don't. For larger items I do, but for pork ribs I don't. When I'm doing a whole brisket, let's slather that thing down in just some standard yellow mustard, maybe some Dijon, and then apply the rub. For pork ribs, I'm gonna apply the rub about 30 minutes before I get onto the smoke, without a binder. I'm just gonna allow the hygroscopic — we talked about this before — properties of both salt and sugar to start pulling some moisture out of the pork itself when it's sitting there. So when you dust it first, it'll look dry, like the desert, like sand. But you go get your fire started and everything else, 30, 45 minutes later, it'll look kind of like it's melted into the product. So it is adhered on its own. You don't need a binder. This is not to say you can't have one. If you want one, have one. And binders can be anything. I've been following this cool guy — just a dude, nobody famous — on Instagram. He does rolling for ribs, and one of the rolls is binder. And his binders are anything from, obviously, mustard, but ketchup, mayonnaise, molasses, maple syrup. It doesn't matter. Something sticky, that's what you're looking for. But I think for pork ribs specifically, I don't need them.

TM: And oftentimes the argument is like, "Well, it doesn't stick to the rib side as much." The bone side of the ribs doesn't need it as much.

ST: It doesn't need it as much. And again, like over time, that will be less of a consideration.

TM: Okay, great. So we're saying dry rub, yay. Binder, optional — but that is another avenue. Thanks to your guy, Rolling for Ribs, that is another avenue where we can add all these different approaches, different flavors, introduce new ones. Did we say garlic and onion powder in the rub as well? They're definitely gonna be common, but —

ST: I did. Yeah, my — just to give you a list again, I said brown sugar, salt, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne. I did leave one off 'cause I wasn't looking at my notes, but I also had a little bit of mustard powder, like Colman's.

TM: Beautiful. Next non-negotiable for you.

ST: I think that's it for non-negotiables. Now we need to talk about a sauce. I do want a sauce for this. But I want a glaze. I don't need a sauce. I don't want, you know, an after-the-fact, while I'm sitting there eating the thing, dunking or smearing sauce on it. I don't like that kind of ribs. I'm just gonna put a glaze on at the final moments of the cooking and get that happening. Which means very little. I can do, I don't know, a cup and a half of this sauce will glaze six racks of ribs.

TM: We'll say for the Sauced barbecue ribs —

ST: For Sauced, we need a sauce.

TM: We need a sauce.

ST: We need a sauce. And guess what's in the sauce?

TM: Booze.

ST: That's right. Now, what booze? Anybody can make a nice whiskey-based barbecue sauce, but I have a better plan.

TM: Okay, so let's talk about this now. Now we're talking about negotiables, which I love. Right? We're off of non-negotiables.

ST: And by the way, the non-negotiables, pretty small list again. I love that we have a pretty small, tight list of non-negotiables every time, and then we can do whatever we want, right?

TM: But then the negotiables, I would say it's a non-negotiable that we're chatting about them, if that makes sense, right? These are active decisions one has to take when making ribs. So sauce is one of them. Do you want sauce, no sauce? We're going with sauce. Talk to me about your approach here. Well, actually, no — you said you have a little trick up your sleeve, so I will allow you the moment, I will allow the suspense to wait there. In the meantime, I'll say, like, the one that I was imagining — the sort of very classic — is a Kansas City style bourbon and molasses glaze. That's where I would go.

ST: And what's in your bourbon and molasses glaze?

TM: So this, again, is gonna be one of those sauces that you're talking about painted on for the last 20 to 30 minutes of cooking, so those sugars caramelize on the bark. So I'm going bourbon and molasses — as the load-bearing ingredients, despite that being one of my kryptonites. It works.

ST: Oh, that's right, the molasses. Let's talk about molasses. You don't like molasses.

TM: That's right.

ST: I forgot.

TM: Additional brown sugar to amplify the caramelization, ketchup for body and tang, furthering the tang with apple cider vinegar — also cutting the sweetness — brown mustard for a bit of heat and spice as well, and Worcestershire sauce to round everything out and add a little bit of umami.

ST: I love it. Can I suggest that we maybe get rid of the thing you don't like, molasses —

TM: And go sorghum?

ST: — stay with everything else you've got there. Let's maybe sub in — I was gonna say honey.

TM: Ooh, yeah.

ST: Let's change bourbon to rye. And let's take the entire quotient of the bourbon that you have in your recipe and translate that into a Manhattan, with rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. So now we're making Manhattan glazed ribs.

TM: Amazing. So we're not —

ST: One canonical sauce for the sauced barbecue ribs. So now we're making Manhattan glazed ribs. We're not only making a cocktail, we're using that cocktail to make the sauce.

TM: I can hear all the barbecue heads out there right now saying, "New York trying to take everything from us again. You've turned ourselves into a Manhattan." But look, this is where we're based. I really like the thinking as well. And it is a phrase that is synonymous with yourself: "The only way to misuse bitters —"

ST: "— is to miss using the bitters." So why don't we have them in our glaze? Plus, the body of the sweet vermouth is gonna bring some weight to the thing that just doing bourbon or just doing rye wouldn't have. The balance of bringing in Angostura bitters — or any bitters you wanna use, it doesn't matter. There's great cherry bitters out there. That would be great. A cherry bitter Manhattan-style rib glaze. Let's go. I think this is gonna make a really delicious sauce. And when I say I think, I mean I know.

TM: And also, I love that those Angostura bitters are also gonna create an additional tie back to the origin for this, right? The region that we're building this and the flavors that are there. So I think that makes a lot of sense. We didn't know where we were coming at with the sauces here, and I feel like that is a big win for us as a podcast. A pretty clear winner for us here today. Next decision people have to make.

ST: What decision is that?

TM: Are we wrapping at any point, or are we not wrapping? And if so, what's your approach? Talk about that for folks who might not be familiar with it.

ST: Sure. So wrapping is when you get to a certain stage in the cooking process where you remove the ribs from the smoker and you wrap them either in foil or in butcher paper, and then put them back on the smoker for another amount of time. It's also known as the Texas crutch, which makes it sound to me like this is a — and some insurance, that I will admit I think you need it on larger pieces. This again is beef ribs. This again is brisket. I don't think you need it on pork ribs. So that's my opinion. What's your — where do you stand?

TM: I generally have done it.

ST: And what's your result?

TM: I mean, I can tell you the thinking behind it. The thinking being that if you're cooking low and slow for a long time, and if you don't have a good command over the live fire, then there might be some instances where you're worried, or you take the temperature too high, you dry out the meat. So I see that as the insurance. I've just kind of done it as those were the techniques that I pulled up and learned from the internet, right? I know there are a couple of common approaches. Aaron Franklin talking about Texas goes three hours no, and then three hours with. And then the other one, which I think is maybe just too convenient to be real, is the 3, 2, 1, right?

ST: Man, so many conflicting opinions about 3, 2, 1 out there. By the way, 3, 2, 1 is when you smoke for three hours, wrap for two hours —

TM: Two hours.

ST: — and then unwrapping, glaze —

TM: Unwrapping, glaze for one hour. 3, 2, 1.

ST: My experience — sorry, go ahead.

TM: No, carry on.

ST: I think that the debate is out there. There are certainly some merits to it, but I think that the other factors that are involved — how hot is your grill, how close to the firebox are your ribs — there's too many exterior factors that make that not a universal rule, though people try and make it a universal rule.

TM: It's too convenient, and it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. The other thing too is, like, we were just talking there, and we both came to this, and we said our glaze, 20 to 30 minutes max. You have half an hour of cooking in that technique.

ST: And it is still cooking, right? Well, I watched a guy on YouTube do a little experiment of his own, and he did ribs the way he normally does them, and he did a 3-2-1. His ribs were done in three hours. He's like, "I still got three hours to go on these ribs." Two wrapped and one not. I think it's important we talk about this fall off the bone notion. This became sort of a battle cry for restaurants to entice — engage your taste buds before anything arrives at the table. Calling something fall off the bone. When it's something off the smoker, if it's fall off the bone, it is overcooked. And I think you get fall off the bone results quite often, specifically with 3-2-1, and certainly sometimes with wrapping in general. Because — let's talk about a baked potato. When I was a kid, my dad would always wrap the baked potato in foil and cook it in the oven or on the grill. Frankly, he cooked mostly on the grill when I was young. That's a steamed potato. The steam can't escape the potato, so it's in, it's caught inside the foil with it. So what's happening when we wrap the meat — we're steaming the meat. We're no longer smoking it, we're steaming it. And that will, of course, create some tenderness. We'll talk about collagen degradation over time and temperature to create that soft mouthfeel. But oftentimes when I see wrapped ribs — especially pork ribs, because they're so small in comparison to beef ribs — when they come out of the wrap, the meat is kind of mushy and the bone slips right out clean, and I don't want that. I also understand that many people do want that. Which is nuts to me. Many people want a shaken vodka martini. That's also nuts to me. But if that's what they want, then that's what they want. So if that's your goal, please go and achieve that goal. Not my — it's not my goal.

TM: Yeah, that's not your goal. And that's not any more wrong of them to want that.

ST: No, that's what I'm saying. But I want toothsome — when you see competition barbecue and they bite the rib, they pull back and they look to see that they can kind of see their teeth marks, that they can see the pull off of the bone. The bone is pretty clean, but it's not sliding right out of there 100% clean. Okay, sorry. That was my little tirade.

TM: The bend test.

ST: Right. When you sort of pick up your ribs from the center so that — lengthwise, you grab them in the center with your tongs, or even your gloves if you're, you know, it's only 225 degrees — and you pick it up, it should bend pretty well, but it shouldn't fold in half. It shouldn't fold in half and break.

TM: Exactly. Or if you pick it up on one side, it will bend almost 90 degrees, almost perpendicular, but it will not fall apart. And if it's completely floppy, overcooked. If it's too stiff, undercooked.

ST: Well, if it's completely floppy and falls apart, you've made pulled barbecue out of your ribs. But don't forget, that texture is good for other things. I'm looking for that when I'm gonna pull my barbecue, when I'm doing a pulled pork butt. Pulled pork, amazing. But it is important to note also, real quickly, on the wrapping — it's often used to get past what's called the stall. Because we're cooking at such a low temperature, the protein will increase in temperature over time, but then it hits a spot every time where it just — you're like, "Am I doing something wrong? What happened?" You get a little panic every time. I still do. There's this little panic where the temperature of the meat isn't rising anymore, and you're like, "Do I need to go mess with the fire? Do I need to stoke the fire?" Check the temperature. Are you continuing at the temperature you're supposed to be at? Don't mess with it. It just stalls for a while, and then it'll pick back up again. But if you wrap, you're swaddling it in more heat, so that stall — you get through the stall faster.

TM: So I think at this point we should really introduce some temperatures so that you can further explain that stall there and why that's happening, right? So I mentioned earlier, ribs are saturated with collagen. These are the connective tissues that hold muscle fibers together. Raw collagen is rubber. It's not pleasant to eat. Heated collagen unwinds and dissolves into gelatin. It gives us that silky mouthfeel that we love. It gives you that nice palate, lip-coating, slight greasiness that we get. Amazing.

ST: A little tacky.

TM: Collagen starts dissolving between 160 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit, but only really finishes that conversion during the 195 to 205 Fahrenheit sweet spot. That internal temperature. Above 210, gelatin starts boiling off itself, and then you're getting dry meat. Where is that stall happening, and why?

ST: It's gonna happen right around like 160. And it's — I'm no scientist. There's probably some science that you've dug up, but my assumption is it's density of the product in general, and then some chemical reaction that's happening with the collagen breaking down and releasing some moisture that is becoming steam, which lowers the temperature.

TM: Exactly that. There you go. He figured it out.

ST: That's good. I talked myself through it.

TM: And obviously, people talk about stalling as a much bigger issue when it comes to perfecting their brisket versus their small pork barbecue ribs. That makes sense as well, right? We're dealing with more collagen. We're dealing with a larger impact therefore of that stall, and it's gonna take much longer. So again. It is though — it is really nerve-wracking when you're out there and you're looking at your temperature and your probe. Okay. Now we mentioned those gadgets to have. I'm gonna say actually a non-negotiable for me —

ST: Oh, okay.

TM: — is being guided by temperature. We spoke about it, but I didn't think about it. So buy a thermometer or a probe or something.

ST: Yeah, and there's so many cool ones out there today. I still have my old Polder one, which is just a wired metal wire that leads to the probe that I can put in the meat and lead the metal wire out of the grill, and there's a readout. I've had that thing for, phew, I don't know, 30 years, to be honest. Probably time to upgrade. But now they have these cool ones that have different depths of the probe when you're grilling or smoking or cooking low and slow like this. Of course, my grill has a temperature gauge on it that I try and check and make sure is accurate by putting other temperature gauges in there from time to time and testing it against them. But yeah, you're gonna need to know the temperature of the —

TM: The meat itself and the environment.

ST: There we go. Thank you. I locked up.

TM: And a lot of these, you can get these Bluetooth ones these days —

ST: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's so many cool ones out there, man.

TM: I love that, and I love tracking. But when you see it on the graph and it does stall, then suddenly you're like, "Do I need to do something with the fire?" No, you wanna keep that thing closed. You certainly don't wanna open up the grill for at least the first hour, if not more.

ST: If I could give one kind of tip for technique on maintaining your temperature. When you're grilling anything with the grill closed — so probably smoking — you have two opportunities to control the airflow, and airflow is what controls the heat of the fire that's happening inside. You've got the intake valve on the bottom of your grill somewhere, and you've got the exhaust valve somewhere on the top of your grill. Set your intake valve to 25% open, and never touch that one again. 'Cause if you're trying to move two levers, you're gonna confuse yourself, and you're gonna confuse the fire. Just control by the exhaust, because that's the one that's gonna be pulling air through. Hot air rises.

TM: Hot air rises.

ST: So just control there. You'll make yourself crazy if you're trying to control your temperature by messing with both valves.

TM: Amazing. And I think if you look at it — if you're using like a Weber like I am — the input, like you're saying at the bottom, how do I describe this? That corresponds to four openings that are like a cross, right? And those things, they're kinda like airplane wings, but with a little tip on the end of them. Imagine almost like — I'm trying to think of something analogous, but what I'm saying is when you have it closed all the way but 20%, you cover the straight part of that, and then there's just that little knob on the end that's still open at the 25% mark. So if you're worried what does 20% look like, and you don't have the fire going already or whatever — like, your grill is completely empty, you can look from above and look in, and there's quite a clear demarcation of what we're talking about here. Great. So there's that. And then we mentioned it before, but we've been speaking about wrapping. Again, if you get yourself a separate cooler that's gonna be big enough for your ribs, wrap them once you've finished. Once you've reached your temperatures, wrap them, put it in there, let it rest.

ST: Have one and a half to two more beers. We're talking 30 minutes minimum of resting. I think that resting the meat is wildly important. And it's so difficult, 'cause you've just spent hours tending this thing and babying it and being its overseer, and all you wanna do is eat this rib. But you got —

TM: And maybe your guests were expecting to eat two hours prior.

ST: Yeah. But you got 30 minutes more to go, and your patience will be duly rewarded. I have an old beat-up Styrofoam — it was something I got fish delivered in at a restaurant once, and it's the thing I use just for this. Insulation. It's not my beer cooler.

TM: All right. Well, Sother, those have been the non-negotiables, the debatables, the negotiables — whatever you wanna call it. Some technical considerations, some science. That has been a bit of a buster section, and we haven't even got to the point where we're discussing the cut of meat itself.

ST: I know. That's getting its whole section now.

TM: But in the meantime, a little quick break.

***

TM: And we're back. Sother, the cut question.

ST: Oh, right. I forgot we haven't even gotten to that yet.

TM: We have not even gotten to that. Three cuts, three different approaches. Walk us through. And it's —

ST: — or maybe it's 2.5. It's like 2.25 really. So the whole thing is called a spare rib, and that's when you're getting most of the rib from up by the spine of the animal all the way down to the rib tips, which are close to the belly, which is of course the bacon. But if you just take that sort of — if you square off that part that's right up by the spine, that's called a baby back rib. It's closer to the back. And it's shorter. It's the baby. It's from the back. It's the baby back rib. It's the one that you get at Chili's. No harm or foul with that. If you take it from where that ends all the way down, that's the spare rib I already mentioned. But if you take it from where that square-off baby back rib ends and clip it before the rib tips, that's your St. Louis. A little bit thicker, a little bit meatier. Then what you have left there are the rib tips that can be made into Chinese spare ribs or what have you.

TM: And I think it's a bit of a specialty in Chicago, the rib tips. Cooked separately, chopped, sauced.

ST: The rib tips are the ones that have that little — they look like — man, I don't know how to say this without it being a little off-putting, but they look almost like fingernails. It's the ends of the ribs, which are not as hard a bone. It's more — why is the word escaping me right now? You know, like your ears are made of —

TM: Collagen?

ST: No, no. Cartilage.

TM: Cartilage. Sorry.

ST: Yeah. It's this little bit of the end of the bone that looks a lot like cartilage. And you can eat it. I don't bother trying to get them out of there. I just eat them. They're crunchy. Whatever. Let's go. So that's what you'll see at the end, and those can be used, like I said, sort of chopped up in all manner of things.

TM: They're delicious.

ST: They're delicious too. Listen, there's no greater gift than the pig.

TM: So again, the way that I kind of memorize all of this — from spare ribs, if you're trimming that down, you get the St. Louis cut, right? And it's definitely a more uniform — which is why, again, that is the preferred cut for competitions. They go St. Louis. And both spare and St. Louis, therefore — the bone side of it — sorry, not the bone side, the meat side of it — the meat that's left on, the more meat you leave on a spare rib or St. Louis, the more you will be taking away from your belly and ultimately your bacon, which the butchers can sell for more. So they have to find this nice little go-between, right? Whereas when it comes to the baby back, that's our loin and our chop that we're — the decision for how much meat to leave on the bone, as it were, the ribs — you're eating into your loin and your chop and stuff like that. So that's gonna be that more prime cut of pork. And therefore, oftentimes baby back might have a little bit more meat on them relative to the whole thing, if you see what I'm saying.

ST: I do.

TM: But it'd be on the back side, right?

ST: On the back side, yeah. For sure.

TM: Okay, great. So what are we going with today?

ST: I'm gonna say, between the two, spare ribs or baby back ribs. In the end, what I'm really gonna say is the length of time that we're gonna cook this thing, and the dedication, the smoke, and the resulting product is going to be delicious no matter which you choose. So I'm gonna say whichever one you choose, buy enough to cover your entire grill, because it's not gonna cost you any more time or fuel to smoke one rack over as many racks as you'll fit. And then look for what's the most economical for you. But our episode today is baby back ribs.

TM: Fantastic. And the other thing of the way I would approach it as well, too, is like — who am I cooking for? I know, for example, if I'm cooking for yourself, I'm gonna cook the St. Louis, because I know you're really gonna appreciate those, and I know that's your preference as well. I'm gonna say, if it's for a bigger crowd, if it's maybe people who don't eat this type of cuisine all the time or whatever, the baby back might appear easier to get involved in or whatever. There might be a little bit more —

ST: It's got the most cachet. It's the more sort of known. Again, thank you, Chili's. "I want my baby back, baby back, baby back." I mean, do you know what I'm talking about? I know you're not from here.

TM: Yeah, we miss these cultural things all the time.

ST: Chili's had this little song jingle that is stuck in every American's head forever.

TM: We know it very well because of The Simpsons. At least it got over there somehow. And then just one more plus for us here today. Again, generally speaking — and the difference isn't a lot — it's gonna be easier to pull that membrane —

ST: Easier, sure — to detach the membrane. Easier, but it's already — it's an easy thing either way. But yes, easier on the baby back rib because you don't have that extra sort of flap of belly underneath the bone side where you're pulling that membrane out of.

TM: Exactly. So much like as we say, "always peel your celery," today we're saying, "always peel your membrane." Get rid of your membrane. And you know what that is. I mean, that's gotta be advice from our dear Maurice.

ST: Exactly. Our Maurice membrane advice for the week. All right.

TM: And —

ST: Thank you, thank you, Chef Maurice.

TM: Our Maurice insane in the membrane technique of the day. I love it. All right, Sother. Anything to add when it comes to those cuts just from the former butcher, or think we've covered those?

ST: I think we touched on it pretty well. It's a personal choice. It's also a choice of economics and price. Like it's a visual choice. Baby backs are really sort of squared off and very uniform looking. And listen, if you're cooking a whole bunch of them, I totally empathize with the notion of wanting them to be uniform in size, 'cause that'll be uniform in cooking. So choose as you will, but today we're talking baby back.

TM: Fantastic. All right. Well, we will take another quick break, and then we will be back with the preparation.

***

TM: Time to bring it all together here, Sother. Time to light the grill. And that's gonna be something we're gonna walk through. We got into it a little bit in Jerk Chicken as well, but we don't want people to have to stop and go back to that. So there can be a little bit of overlap there. Why don't you talk us through the preparation of today's sauced barbecue ribs?

ST: All right. Yes. Let's light the grill. I wasn't really super prepared to talk about it, but you're right, we should. I think it's an inexpensive piece of equipment, and I'm not the type who says you gotta have all these pieces of equipment — but a chimney lighter is kind of an invaluable tool. You're just gonna have a more even base of coals using one, and I think mine cost 20 bucks. And frankly, I bet you can go on Facebook Marketplace and buy one used. Why buy a new one? There's no difference if it's all beat up. Yours is gonna get beat up after use one. Go get a used one. Get your lump charcoal into that guy and get some fire going underneath it. It'll take 20 minutes or so for it to get to a nice even, white-hot heat. Make a nice bed of that in your grill off to one side. This is offset cooking for sure, 'cause we're gonna be smoking low and slow. If you've got a smoke box on the side like I do on my grill, put these coals in there. Before this, you're gonna have chosen your wood, and if you've got some good chunks of that, let's get them soaked in some water.

TM: Overnight?

ST: Overnight if you can think of it, but at least while you're prepping everything, getting everything ready, get them soaking for a couple hours if you can. That'll just slow down their burn, giving you that softer, wispier smoke again. And also, you won't need to fill your box with so many of them. You shouldn't be burning through a mountain of your wood. You might burn through a pretty good-sized mountain of coals, but the wood, you should be able to keep in there and keep a nice steady smoke going without using a ton of fuel. So yeah, that's the first step. Get that happening. But at the same time, it's not the first step. The first step is — let's get those racks out of the packaging that they come in. Let's peel that membrane. Thank you, Maurice. Let's do any excess trimming, which you shouldn't have to do much, but there might be some little scraggly bits hanging off that need a little trimming up, squaring off, et cetera. Pat them dry if you can real quick with a paper towel, and then let's go in with the rub. Don't be shy. The rub is supposed to really generously coat the whole thing on both sides. You don't have to go as deep on the bone side if you don't want, but I don't try and temper myself. I go the same amount on both sides. Let those lie there bone side down again while you're setting up the grill, while you're getting your wood chips soaked. And then once your fire is ready — hopefully that's gonna take about 30 minutes, like I said, 20 minutes or so to get the coals ready, and then once you get them into the box and get some wood chunks on there, the smoke will start going in about 30 minutes. Then bring out your ribs, put them on the grill, bone side down. They should be sort of shiny. Your rub should have sort of melted into the meat at this point. It's not curing it, but — this is the problem. Some people ask, "Well, why can't I season them overnight?" You will be curing. Some people say, "Why can't I season them in the morning when I wake up?" You will be curing. 30 minutes or so before, maybe up to an hour. But what we're not trying to do is hammify. That's a word that's used in the barbecue world, and I kind of forgot about it during the discussion. But if you put your rub on too early, you will cure the meat, and your end result will be ham-like. Ham is a cured meat. We're not trying to cure this meat. We're trying to rub it down. So you got your rub on there, and then again, when it sort of looks glistening, get them on the grill, bone side down, as far away as you can from the smoke box — from your pile of coals as you can. But again, if you're covering the entire grill, some of them are gonna be right on top of it. So you're just gonna have to manage those, too. You're gonna have to move them around — do a little Tetris action throughout the cook. And then close the box. Get and maintain a temperature between 225 and 275, so target 250 all the time, and any time you start to go one way or the other, it's time to either add some fuel or open that exhaust so that you'll cool off a little bit. That's the fun of it to me. I often use the phrase F and F: frustrating or fascinating. This is, for me, fascinating. For a lot of people, it's frustrating, but that's the part that I like. I want to be out there by the grill managing it all day long. And then yeah — get your probe thermometer into your thickest one that you've got. Chase it around the grill if you have to move it or whatever. And go till you hit about 160. Pull them out. This is the time we're gonna decide to wrap. Personally, I'm not a wrapper. We already talked about that. More rock and roll. I'm more rock and roll than wrap. I'm more jazz, I think, these days, as I get older. So I'm not gonna wrap them, but I'm gonna just keep on riding till I get up closer to 190. At that point, then I'm gonna pull them out. I'm not even gonna pull them out — I'm gonna brush them down with that sauce and then go for maybe just a 20 to 30 minutes more at maybe just a slightly higher temperature. I'll just open the grate a little bit more and get some fast heat on there to get that glaze to adhere to what I've hopefully achieved by now, which is a beautiful bark. And that bark will be unlike the bark that you get when you're making a brisket or something. It won't be sort of like black. It'll be kind of a rosy, pinkish, reddish brick. It's more like brick color, right? There's me dancing through my —

TM: Terracotta.

ST: — there's me dancing through my colorblindness once again for your entertainment. Are you not entertained? Meanwhile, on the side, we have our sauce going. This is if you've got a little burner on the side of your grill, you're real lucky. I don't have one. But you can do it in a pan right there on the grill. You've got your brown sugar, all the things you listed, ketchup. We decided now we're gonna use honey instead of molasses. We're gonna go in with — instead of bourbon, rye. But instead of just rye, we're gonna go in there with rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. We're making the Manhattan Glaze for our ribs. And that's what's gonna go on for that last 30 minutes. And there won't be much of that left, if any. I don't want these to be like saucy. I want them to be tacky. Right? You need to like lick your fingers. You don't need to go wash your hands.

TM: All right. That sounds delicious to me. I'm also gonna ask you — and this could be its own show entirely —

ST: And don't forget, we did talk about it, but at the end of all this, wrapping it up — resting in the cooler for 30 minutes. Your patience will be rewarded.

TM: 100%. It will be tested as well. I was just gonna say accompaniments. We don't need to go too deep. We don't have time to go too deep, and frankly, you know where people can find those things.

ST: Yeah, if you're a subscriber.

TM: Premium subscribers. For a mere $7 a month.

ST: Or $70 for the year. Which is two months for free. $14 off.

TM: It's two months for free, which you always need to remind me, 'cause I'm terrible at the maths on that one.

ST: Yeah. You can find those things on our paid subscription, which just helps fuel the show, keeps us going, keeps us getting sauced with you. You'll have commercial-free listening. You can join our growing group of acolytes who have a back channel direct connection to us, first right of refusal on events that we post about that we're gonna do live and in person. There's a lot of cool stuff.

TM: And that sauce that we just came up with on air — guess what? You're gonna have a recipe for that in the digital recipe cards. Plus a recipe for the rub —

ST: Plus a recipe for the rub.

TM: — which is absolutely ideal. And then also access to —

ST: Plus a recipe for whatever cocktail we're about to talk about.

TM: Exactly. Sother, those recipes — now very exciting — live on our website too. So they are available via Supercast, which is the service that we use for subscriptions and for signups. Super easy there. But they also live on saucedpodcast.com. Go to recipes, put in the email address that is associated with your account, and you have them all in one place. It's a really easy way to browse them super quick. Maybe you're at the store, you need to pull something up. And the final thing I gotta say just about the premium subscription right now — we gotta thank people, because we've had a lot of new subscribers recently. In the past couple weeks we've seen a spike.

ST: Yeah, we've seen a spike of new listeners.

TM: Both on the free side of things — folks, thank you for joining us. We love to see that. We love to have you here. We think you're gonna enjoy going through the back catalog, looking at Jerk Chicken, listening to — not looking. Listening to Carne Asada, which is this as well. Listening to Wings. All these related episodes. Folks, you're gonna enjoy those. So folks, we see you.

ST: Yeah, we appreciate you.

TM: Indeed. And those of you who have converted to paid subscribers, thank you very much. It helps keep the show alive. So our side dishes — we're not doing side dishes here, but hit me with three things you also wanna see on your plate.

ST: I'm gonna hit you with two and an extra thing for the extra people who are subscribers. You ready for that? Because I'm eating something smoky and unctuous and somewhat fatty, I'm gonna want something cutting. So for me, it's coleslaw. Vinegar-based coleslaw. I'm a huge proponent of mayonnaise-based coleslaw, but that's for a different thing. For this, I want vinegar-based coleslaw. I am also a massive stan for cornbread, and I think cornbread matches this cuisine, obviously. But here's the trick on this one. I do put my cornbread — I cook my cornbread on the smoker. It takes a little longer, but that's okay. I've got plenty of time while I'm doing this, and then I've got smoked cornbread. And then the bonus round — a couple years ago, I made a recipe, what I call martini pickles. So it's a pickle that's made with cucumbers, obviously, and all the pickling things, but then it's augmented with gin and dry vermouth. So we can have a Manhattan rib. We can have a martini pickle. And we'll put that recipe up for our subscribers.

TM: So again, I reckon we're gonna need someone to remind us —

ST: Yeah. Somebody needs to remind us in the comments.

TM: — in the comments there, please, 'cause we forgot last time. Then we put the dressing up, so we're gonna do that. You know what that reminds me of?

ST: What's that?

TM: Final plug, little, final tiny little plug here. Speaking of Manhattan sauce and Martini pickles, how about a Manhattan-scented candle — or a Martini-scented candle? Well, yeah. We have those here at Sauced. They are available on our shop. After you've looked at the recipes, head on over there. We've only got three things in the shop right now, right? We got two —

ST: Two things.

TM: The two candles — and the apron.

ST: Yes. That's three things. It's a candle, but it's two of them.

TM: It's a set of candles. You can't buy them individually, folks.

ST: There we go. That's what I'm messing up. But we have that. If you buy both of them together —

ST: The discount.

TM: $10 discount. And for the rest of the month of May — as we shared in our onions bonus episode, if you use the code “ONION” in the checkout, get 10 bucks off.

ST: Wow. We're so giving.

TM: All right. All right. We are giving. That's enough plugging ourselves. There's more to come. Let's give some more with some drinks. But before we do that, final one of the day.

***

TM: All right, we're back. The drinks.

ST: Let's get sauced, as we say here around here.

TM: I like that. I used the last time you did that as well. I worked that into an Instagram clip we made. I felt like that was a nice little debut there. So let's get sauced. Talk to me about pairings first.

ST: I mean, while I'm tending the fire, which is gonna take a few hours, I am absolutely drinking a crisp, very cold beer. My go-to choices in this arena are gonna be Lone Star, Schaefer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Narragansett. I just want a backyard pounder.

TM: Miller High Life out the bottle.

ST: Sure, the little ponies. 'Cause I'm standing over the fire, it's hot. I am gonna be futzing with it all the time, 'cause I can't help myself. Also, I really, really, really enjoy it. I don't know if I'm making that clear enough in this episode, but I enjoy this process. It's lengthy, it's arduous, it's tedious, it's fulfilling, it's — I love it. Like, I love every bit of it. So I'm drinking a delicious, easy, frosty beer. And often, yes, I want it out of the bottle, I want it out of the can. I also often put it in a big pint glass full of ice, and I drink it on ice. I love a, quote-unquote, "crappy beer" on ice. And I think my old man is showing when I say that every time. Meaning I feel like I'm an old man when I say that. So that's what I'm drinking while I'm making this. And I assume you are too, unless you've got something you want to say about wine, and then we'll get into cocktails.

TM: Yeah. So I've got a wine for us here today.

ST: Is this — are we gonna drink this while we're making, or while we're eating, or both?

TM: Throughout. And this is kind of, you know, as we mentioned in Jerk — anything that can make its way into the cooler and come out cool. So it doesn't necessarily have to be white or rosé or even orange. In this case, it's gonna be a fizzy red, Lambrusco.

ST: Oh, yeah, man. I love Lambrusco. Do they have a pork-brusco? A beef-brusco? Coming soon.

TM: Emilia-Romagna is the region. Dry red. If you associate it with something sweet and not very complex, you are thinking about a different era — and not the proper thing. Real Lambrusco, which by the way, is extremely economical. They really are —

ST: They — you're dancing around. They're cheap.

TM: They're cheap. They are inexpensive. You can just buy a couple of bottles, buy six, chuck it in the cooler, you're good to go.

ST: Yeah. No problem. You know what? I'm gonna futz with your thing here, and I'm gonna tell you something I used to do. We used to take Lambrusco, again, and put it in a big old glass of ice, and then dose it with some Meletti Amaro, and have like a sort of weirdly engineered Kalimotxo.

TM: That sounds delicious.

ST: And by the way — Kalimotxo, Kalimotxo for the listener is Coca-Cola on ice with red wine.

TM: Red wine, yeah.

ST: So in this case, the red wine is fizzy already. Meletti is a cola, not amaro. It tastes kinda like Coca-Cola without the fizz and the water. So if you add these two together, you've kinda built a reverse-engineered Kalimotxo that's all alcohol.

TM: You know, it was funny being a drinks editor — once a year you'd get someone who'd just discovered Kalimotxo and pitch you, and be like, "This drink is amazing." And I'm like, "Yeah, we know about that one, but thank you. And read the site if you're pitching us, 'cause we probably already covered it." That's a different profession. Sother. Cocktail. I've got one for us here today. I haven't created it, but I've got a cocktail. How about yourself?

ST: I have a classic. I didn't create a cocktail for this recipe, but I have a cocktail that I think absolutely fits for the atmosphere of making ribs. Okay. What do you got?

TM: I got a classic as well.

ST: Yeah? What do you got?

TM: Mint Julep.

ST: I got a Mint Julep. Are you crazy? Look, right there in my notes.

TM: Mint Julep. That's wild. Well — and you know why? Here's why I think we should go with a julep for this one. And I'm curious why you're choosing it yourself, too. But I'm like, it's quintessentially American. And it's one of those ones that got a bad rap for being made badly for so long. Probably because of its ties to the Derby, perhaps — or maybe that didn't help. But I think also in terms of cooling off in summer, nothing better than a frosty, ice cold, well-made julep. And it's just, it's Americana right there.

ST: Yeah. What is a Mint Julep to you? And I'll tell you what it is to me, or we'll explain it to the listener.

TM: Bourbon. Simple syrup. Mint leaves. Crushed ice. Absolutely. Meticulously swiveled and prepared and built and just bursting with freshness and vibrancy.

ST: Yeah. You told me the build. I was more asking like, what is it? And I'm gonna tell you what I think it is — and maybe it was a trick question. It's an Old Fashioned. It's over crushed ice instead of over a cube of ice. It has mint instead of bitters. But it's got spirit, sugar, water, and instead of bitters, it's got mint. It's an Old Fashioned. And then when you say bourbon, I'm gonna up the ante here and say high proof bourbon. We're always gonna start high proof when we make a Mint Julep, because it's going over that crushed ice — which is also a non-negotiable in this scenario. Can't make a Mint Julep over regular ice. You made something, but you didn't make a Mint Julep. The crushed ice is going to dilute pretty quickly. So that first sip of a Mint Julep every time is bursting with aroma, 'cause you got hopefully a big plume of mint on top that's right in your nose. I cut the straw for people to make sure that they have to get their nose in that mint, and you have to use a straw 'cause it's on that pebble ice. But that first sip is always a little bit bracing. Like it's a little smack on the back of the hand to say, "Slow down." But by the time you get to the last sip, a bunch of that ice has melted, the mint is falling down into the glass, you're swirling it around. Tastes like sweet tea. You have forgotten that first bracing sip that hurt you, so much so that you have another.

TM: Don't go too far now, but I'll allow you to have two.

ST: So how I like to make a Mint Julep — if you've got a Mint Julep cup, you know, the metal cup, please go for that. But if you don't, a nice size — I like to use, like, a Mai Tai glass. And when I say a Mai Tai glass, picture your standard pint glass, but cut three-quarters of, from the top. So it's a wide but tapered glass. Pretty heavy. Put in your simple syrup. I'm probably gonna use demerara, just to give it a little more richness. I typically use two-to-one. Then you're gonna go in with a solid two ounces of your overproof. Sounds intimidating, but don't worry, you're gonna drink this pretty slowly. You're gonna press a few leaves of mint in the bottom with the back of a spoon or a muddler, whatever you have. Then you're gonna pile in all that pebble ice, give it a swizzle, pile a little more pebble ice on top, smack a plume of mint and insert it. Stick in a paper straw — or whatever you use — and cut it so that your nose has to touch the mint every time you go for the straw. And one final thing I like to do is take a little bit of powdered sugar in a dusting bowl, and just dust the mint with powdered sugar.

TM: Beautiful. And the other thing — the final thing I wanted to say about this cocktail — when cocktails are so closely tied to a specific event, that means that we disregard them, we ignore them at other times of the year. For the rest of the time.

ST: Yeah. So you're telling me I can only drink Mint Juleps for two minutes every year? The most exciting two minutes in sports, the Derby.

TM: Exactly.

ST: No, it's a great drink. And especially, again, when I'm thinking of this whole scenario that we just painted for the listener, it's a hot day. I'm out by the grill. It's hot. Give me that — I see those little beads of sweat running down that metal julep cup. I am enticed by this thing. The aroma is refreshing after standing over that smoke. Like, let's go.

TM: Chef, ideally someone's making it for you in this case. You know what I mean as well?

ST: A hundred percent.

TM: Hand whoever's tending the grill a julep.

ST: Please, someone.

TM: Amazing. All right, Sother. Final thoughts for us here today. What you got for me? You teased a quote at the beginning of the show.

ST: Well, I think that, first of all, culturally, barbecue ribs are more than food. They're deeply tied to American regional identity, to Black culinary history specifically, to communal cooking, to hospitality and celebration. And it's a craft that you mentioned at the top was passed from pit master to pit master. I think properly smoked ribs are one of the clearest examples in world cuisine of humble ingredients elevated by technique, tradition, and — I think the most important ingredient here — time. I love it. That's my final thought. My Jerry Springer final thought of the day.

TM: Fantastic. I mean, I think that covers everything. So my final thought — a little something we didn't get into in the non-negotiables, but I could have done, but I wanted to save it for this one. Final non-negotiable for me here today, in the barbecue ribs episode on Sauced — bones. Ribs. So you're looking at me. Okay, bear with me.

ST: I'm with you.

TM: Remember when we did our Wings episode, and I said bones were a non-negotiable in that one, and we had our lawsuit, because Buffalo Wild Wings was being sued for advertising boneless wings that weren't actually wings? 12 days after that episode went live, the judge, John J. Thorpe Jr., dismissed the Buffalo Wild Wings lawsuit with one of the great judicial puns in recent memory, stating, "This lawsuit has no meat on its bones."

ST: Nice, John J.

TM: So two months before that happened, and in a case that's still ongoing — in fact, in the same federal court, based on the same legal theory — McDonald's is being sued.

ST: For? Are chicken nuggets not their nuggets?

TM: The McRib.

ST: Oh, right. No bones.

TM: Contains no rib meat.

ST: I mean, do we know that it contains meat?

TM: We do know that it contains meat.

ST: Is it pork?

TM: It is pork, but it's pork offcuts. But so that's why I said non-negotiable: ribs has to be ribs. And you know — do you know where they first introduced the McRib? In which city?

ST: I mean, I feel like you are leading me here, and I'm gonna go with Kansas City.

TM: Exactly. In 1981, McDonald's introduced a fake rib product into the city of Henry Perry, Calvin Trillin, and Arthur Bryant. And 40 years later —

ST: They're being sued for it.

TM: 45 years later — they're being sued for it.

ST: We absolutely have to give an update when this case lands on whatever show we're doing at that time, to find out what the outcome is. I'm curious if it's gonna be thrown out for no meat on its bones as well.

TM: And we don't know who the judge is yet. Looking at this —

ST: But if it's the same judge, I feel like he's gonna say the same thing.

TM: Oh, he needs to come up with a new line.

ST: Well, he'll come up with a new line, but he'll still throw it out. I think that this one specifically doesn't need to be thrown out, because we talked about it on the Wings episode. Wings are obviously the thing — a chicken wing — but when you say, "I want wings," you're gonna get buffalo — or sorry, when you say, "I want wings," you're gonna get whatever. Could be whatever. But when you say, "I want buffalo wings," that's a specific thing.

TM: Well, no, that was boneless wings.

ST: Right, I understand, but you know what I'm saying? I think wings is a preparation.

TM: Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.

ST: That's why it has no meat on its bones. It's a preparation. Wings is a preparation. Ribs are ribs.

TM: True. Yeah, so you're saying there is meat on this rib?

ST: I think so. I hope the judge agrees. And — but who's suing and who wins? Where does the money go?

TM: Well, this is —

ST: To everyone who ever had a McRib, do they get some money back?

TM: No, there's plaintiffs. It's a class action lawsuit. I don't know. The McRibwich — also popularized by — no, what's the one from The Simpsons? They called it the —

ST: The Ribwich.

TM: Ribwich, yeah. Oh, and my God, I don't think I'd ever tasted ribs by that point, but I think at that moment, a seed was sown for me. Simpsons did it.

ST: Simpsons did it.

TM: All right, Sother. Only one last thing to do. Time to put on the apron.

ST: Break out the shaker.

TM: And let's get smoking.

ST: And drinking.

TM: Hell yeah. Cheers.

ST: Cheers, buddy.