St-Louis Style Spare Ribs
Spare Ribs vs. Baby Back
St. Louis style spare ribs are one of my favorite things to cook and eat! Compared to baby back ribs, spare ribs tend to be fattier and flatter and thus, more flavorful and forgiving in my opinion. Spare ribs can be cooked whole or trimmed into the St. Louis cut along with rib tips like we will do today. In my opinion, St. Louis Style ribs are the most aesthetic, easiest to cook and best tasting. Plus, you get the rib tips that you can save up in the freezer and do a bunch of stuff with. You typically find the whole spare ribs at the store, but with a little practice, you can square them up nicely and they will look great before and after cooking.
Preparing Spare Ribs
To prepare the ribs, you want to trim them first. usually, the 3rd or 4th rib from the end is the longest. Once you find it, make a straight cut along the edge. From there, knock off the point on the end to try to achieve symmetry between the two ends. This is a St. Louis cut. Now, for the rub, I tend to lean towards sweeter flavored rubs. In particular, I really like Killer Hogs The BBQ Rub. To me, it has the sweetness, salt and BBQ flavors you really want with spare ribs or pork in general. Plus, the rich, red color looks great as bark develops over the cook.
When putting rub on ribs, I prefer to use a binder rather than the rib moisture itself (I pat the ribs dry). If you want to remove the membrane (use a butter knife and paper towel), do so before placing the binder and rub on the ribs. It is not necessary, but I recommend doing it if you have time, especially if you like them to be “fall off the bone,” tender. Mustard is my preference for a binder, but you can really use any kind of liquid as long as it is low on sugar (it will encourage burning). Once you have a binder smeared on the spare ribs, sprinkle a generous, even coat of rub on the ribs like I did below. I recommend starting with the underside of the ribs so the top side looks better in the end. Let the ribs sweat for a few minutes and put them on the smoker.
Cooking Spare Ribs
When cooking spare ribs, there are tons of ways to do it. You can even cook them in an oven and they will turn out great. This cook will take about 5-6 hours loosely following the 3-2-1 method at 250 degrees. Cooking at 200-225 would be a more exact 3-2-1 copy. 3 hours unwrapped, 2 hours wrapped, and 1 hour unwrapped with glaze. In the recipe we below, we will trim the ribs down to the St. Louis cut and smoke over cherry wood at approximately 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Though, feel free to use whatever wood or methods you prefer. Pecan, hickory, apple, cherry, maple or a combination of them are great choices for spare ribs. My favorite way to cook these are using a ratio of 2/3 pecan and 1/3 cherry wood. Currently, I can’t find pecan in my area, so I only used cherry. Use whatever you like.
Depending on your smoker, you may want to get it up to temp before preparing the spare ribs because it only takes a few minutes to get the St. Louis style ribs ready. For me, I use a Weber Smokey Mountain, and it takes about an hour to get it up to temp and rolling clean smoke, so I like to get that going first. Something like a pellet grill wouldn’t have that same issue. It all depends on what you have.
Once the grill is up to temp and your spare ribs are ready, put them on the smoker. At 250, I like to spritz the St. Louis spare ribs after about 2 hours or once the rub has set. You should be able to touch the ribs and not pull away any rub. I After the initial spritz, I hit them again about every 15-30 minutes thereafter. We are trying to maintain moisture on the spare ribs and develop color. I recommend having some juice in your spritz but not only juice. 100% juice spritz will burn. I use 1/3 apple juice, 1/3 apple cider vinegar and 1/3 water. Get creative. people use pomegranate juice, grape juice, you name it.
After 3-ish hours, I wrap in foil with butter, honey, brown sugar and rub. This adds some richness to the ribs, speeds up the cook and really tenderizes them. You don’t lose much in terms of smoke because meat stops taking on smoke after a certain temperature. It also stops the spare ribs from getting darker. If you like darker colored ribs, you can leave them unwrapped and increase the cooking time.
You can leave the spare ribs wrapped on the smoker until they are wall apart tender and eat them that way (this cook), or pull them while they still have some strength, glaze and let it set up. Glazing ribs is my preferred method, however, these ribs cooked a lot faster than I normally see. After 3 hours unwrapped, and less than 2 hours wrapped, the bones were exposed. Still fine eating, but not ideal for me! Serve these ribs with some of our slaw for a great combo!
Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 Rack Spare Ribs
- Favorite BBQ rub
- 1 tbsp Binder (optional; we use mustard)
- 1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1/2 cup Apple Juice
- 1/2 cup Water
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- Approx. 1 tbsp honey
Directions
- Heat smoker to 250 degrees (F) and get clean smoke rolling
- Trim spare ribs into St. Louis cut
- Remove membrane if desired
- Apply binder and rub; allow to rest for 5-10 minutes
- Add ribs to smoker; leave undisturbed for 2 hours
- Spritz at 2 hours or when rub is dry to touch; spritz every 15-30 thereafter
- At 3 hours, remove ribs and wrap, meat side down on butter, honey and brown sugar if desired
- Add back to the pit for 1-2 hours or until desired level of tenderness
- Remove, add favorite sauce to ribs and put back on the pit for approx. 30 minutes
