Comp Rib help

In my opinion, Costco and Sams usually have decent stuff. Got a local butcher?

I have good luck with ribs from Meijer. I spend a lot of time looking through the available racks to find the bones that are the least crooked. I look for spares that are as close to 4.5 pounds untrimmed as I can get them.

Meijer by us has only "enhanced" pork

Costco usually has good meaty ribs, but they sell them in 3 packs and you can only see the underside on one rack. I continue to purchase them there for now... I have read here that you should try and build a relationship with your local butcher, he might let you pick through his stock personally and find the best stuff for competing...might help to take your butcher a sample of your smoked deliciousness

This is a pretty popular topic. I have been trying to find a good local supplier as well. I also believe the way the slab is positioned on the grate has a lot to do with bone alignment. I try to compress the slab( bones pushed together) and keep the slab as square as possible. Before, I might of just thrown a slab on the grate with no regard to its position. The results have been much better lately and easier to slice.

Straightness of ribs is hardly an issue of concern for me. Cook them right and have some knife skills. Done

dr pearl said:

Straightness of ribs is hardly an issue of concern for me. Cook them right and have some knife skills. Done

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By knife skills, do you mean cut through the bone?

ITBFQ said:

By knife skills, do you mean cut through the bone?

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Not cutting through the bone. Just careful selection, trimming and cutting of the ribs. I use smaller ribs, so the curvature isn't as much of an issue. I suppose if you are using a larger 4.5+, you would run into this issue more often.

OK, here's the dirty little secret about ribs:

Only one rack in ten is meaty with straight bones.

This means your chances of finding a multi-pack of all great racks is about the same as finding a low maintenance super model with an engineering degree. So how is it that some teams do always manage to have good ribs to cook at a comp? Simple - it's a numbers game. Either you buy a lot of ribs and sort through the ten racks to find the one, or you find a supplier who deals in bulk meats and will do the cherry picking for you.

And there endeth the lesson, Grasshopper.

Ribs

dr pearl said:

Not cutting through the bone. Just careful selection, trimming and cutting of the ribs. I use smaller ribs, so the curvature isn't as much of an issue. I suppose if you are using a larger 4.5+, you would run into this issue more often.

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Hi So where do you get your smaller ribs from? I'm in Paramus, always looking for some good ribs to smoke.
Thanks DanB

i buy farmland ribs from heb and have had good luck with getting straight ones. Now if i could just get them to taste better lol.:razz:

Don't know if there's a Kroger near you, but they sell single cryopacked ribs.
For that matter, ANY single crypacked ribs allow you to see the bones in each rack. Usually by sorting through what's in the case you can find 3 or 4 racks that are nice and straight.

Even then, we sometimes need to be "creative" on how we slice up the individual bones for the box. If you're good you can "fake it" pretty well. As Ron said, the presentation in the box may LOOK like they're perfectly straight rib bones, but a good rib slicer can fool you. Rarely do we see a perfect rack of ribs where all the bones are perfectly spaced and straight. They almost always "crawl" to one side as you go down the rack. You just have to know how to work around that.

Straight or not, the best tasting ribs always go in the box and more times than we'd like, the ugliest rack will taste the best, so you have to learn how to slice with some skill.

DanB said:

Hi So where do you get your smaller ribs from? I'm in Paramus, always looking for some good ribs to smoke.
Thanks DanB

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I use Hatfield's Dan. There has been discussion here on their quality. Some don't seem to like them. They have done pretty well for me this year.

Wampus said:

Don't know if there's a Kroger near you, but they sell single cryopacked ribs.
For that matter, ANY single crypacked ribs allow you to see the bones in each rack. Usually by sorting through what's in the case you can find 3 or 4 racks that are nice and straight.

Even then, we sometimes need to be "creative" on how we slice up the individual bones for the box. If you're good you can "fake it" pretty well. As Ron said, the presentation in the box may LOOK like they're perfectly straight rib bones, but a good rib slicer can fool you. Rarely do we see a perfect rack of ribs where all the bones are perfectly spaced and straight. They almost always "crawl" to one side as you go down the rack. You just have to know how to work around that.

Straight or not, the best tasting ribs always go in the box and more times than we'd like, the ugliest rack will taste the best, so you have to learn how to slice with some skill.

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Wampus, you tease! :wink: If I could just figure out that creative slicing part to make them all look straight I'd be happy.

What wampus is saying is that you do not have to cut parellel to the bone on your cuts. You might have to angle your cut so that their might be more meat on the top or bottom of the rib, which will make the rib look straight.

Cue's Your Daddy said:

What wampus is saying is that you do not have to cut parellel to the bone on your cuts. You might have to angle your cut so that their might be more meat on the top or bottom of the rib, which will make the rib look straight.

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Exactly!

Heck, sometimes I've even cut a "wedge" of meat between two rib bones to get things "back on line". If done correctly, one would never know that this small triangle of rib meat was trimmed away.

I cut a rack of ribs with the bones up and usually can make a plan when I look at how the bones are angled as to where I want to slice. If the bones progressively lean to the left from right to left, then I'll start my first slice where the top of the slice is closer to the bone on the right than the bottom of the slice. (I always slice from right to left. Not sure why, but I just always have.) The most important thing (to me) is to keep the slices parallel and evenly spaced to one another, no matter what the bones are doing. So half way through the rack, if the cuts are still "leaning" left, you just have to adjust with that "wedge" to get the cuts back to "straight".

Now you have to be cautious of cutting all the way against the bone on one side or you risk the meat pulling off of it during the judge's bite. There's a fine line there.



I don't know if that helps or is confusing, but I don't know any other way to describe it.

Bottom line, rarely are two racks of ribs identical. You have to make it LOOK like they are by the way you slice and box. As presented in the box, ideally, the ribs should be exactly the same width and the cuts should be parallel to each other. At least that's my thinking.

Like I said...knife skills