BBQ Short Ribs

 

In this post we will look at what exactly beef short ribs are, the difference between ribs and short ribs and how we cooked ours. We get our beef a half a cow at a time so that we means we are saving a lot of money over time because we aren’t buying it from the store. It also means that we get a wide variety of cuts of meat from steak, ground beef, short ribs, and even the tongue if we want it. We are thankful for the opportunity to purchase meat that way and look forward to experimenting and trying new ways to prepare it.

What are short ribs?

Beef short ribs are a type of rib that comes from the chuck, plate, rib, or brisket section of a cow. They are called short ribs because they contain short pieces of rib bones surrounded by meat. All short ribs are from a rib section that contains three to four ribs. Depending on where it is cut from, it can be three to five inches thick, and contains meat interspersed with a lot of muscle, fat, and tendon, which give it a lot of strong beefy flavor. While they offer less meat than steak, they have more meat than other beef rib varieties. Because of their high fat content, they are perfect for slow cooking methods.

 

What is the difference between ribs and short ribs?

 

The back ribs are cut from the upper back of the cow. Short ribs are cut from the lower portion of the rib cage in the front section of the cow. Short ribs are directly beneath the back ribs. Meat: The small amount of meat on beef back ribs is between the bones, and beef short ribs have meat atop the bones.

 

How can you prepare short ribs?

Short ribs are versatile and can be prepared in various ways, including braising, grilling, smoking, or even slow cooking. They are beloved for their rich, beefy flavor and the tender, succulent texture they develop when cooked slowly. Once you have cooked your short ribs, the bones are good to use when making your own beef stock. We like to keep an old ice gallon ice cream container in the freezer that we can put our meat bones and vegetable scraps in until we are ready to make some stock.

 

How did we prepare our short ribs?

We live in the Midwest and like our BBQ. So, we wanted our short ribs to have that Missouri BBQ style and flavor. We started by placing our short ribs in a crock pot with onion slices and about half of a can of beer. We cooked them slowly on low for about 5 ½ hours. Honestly, we put them in the crock pot about 11:30 am on a Sunday and left them alone. Once the ribs got to the point where the meat and bones were starting to separate, we took them out of the crockpot along with the onions.

Around 5 pm we started getting the grill ready to use. We like to use a Weber charcoal grill to cook our ribs on. We like to use lump charcoal instead of charcoal briquets. We feel like the lump charcoal burns more evenly and longer. Once we had our fire going, we moved all the charcoal to one side of the grill and placed our ribs on the other side. We coated them with BBQ sauce and put the lid on. At this stage the ribs are already cooked, and we are wanting to get that BBQ sauce coating and smokey flavor. We flipped them after 5-7 minutes and coated the other side with sauce, put the lid back on. After 5-7 more minutes we removed the ribs, sliced them and they were ready.

They were packed with flavor and tender. We served our ribs with pesto pasta salad (made with our homemade pesto sauce) and some NAAN bread we made that day as well.

 

 

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