UDS Beef Ribs this Sunday, need to do a better render

[Debmar]

I have succeeded once with beef ribs, only once. I had some extra space on the grate and threw one small rack on with no thought or plan and it was an eye opening, jaw dropping bit of beefy perfection. But i dont remember exactly what i did and have never been able to reproduce the result. Flavor and bark are never lacking but they are too fatty and the family are not fans of the fat.
Anyone have any tips on how to render these ribs more completely?

Going onto my UDS with charcoal and oak and was planning on running around 250-275F. Will trim off all surface fat first. Thinking i would go bones down till about 175F I.T. and then flip in an attempt to render more fat. Go till probe tender but was thinking of maybe going a little longer after probe tender to render more.
I wasnt going to wrap but if that would help i would consider it.

Could be the initial success was just a real lean rack but i dont recall. I have 2 steers worth of ribs in the freezer (we raise our own) so i ‘d really like to be able to come up with a winning protocol for them.
If anyone has any advice i would appreciate it.
Thanks

PS: we've been really happy with the different cuts from these steers, only the ribs are causing me grief. They have a somewhat lean muscle layer covering a substantial fat layer that is above the very marbled layer just on top of the bones. Its the fat layer between the meat layers that i am struggling with. I have even been considering separating or breaking them down to eliminate that fat layer but that would leave me with a fairly thin rib.

 

[sudsandswine]

I trim pretty much all the fat off the top side of beef ribs including the silver skin between the fat and the meat. I would keep the bones toward the heat in a drum smoker, if you need to render more fat they just need to cook longer. There’s lots of intramuscular fat that needs to render but as long as they probe tender you should be good. Slightly over cooked beef ribs (or brisket) is going to be more enjoyable (IMO) than slightly undercooked so err on the side of more dome, maybe?

 

[Debmar]

Thanks for the reply. Will try again tomorrow and update how it went.

 

[edmonds]

This is probably too late to be of any use to you. But ...
It sounds like you are talking about a rack of short ribs. We raise our own beef also (Dexters). The bones should have a layer of meat on top whose thickness varies depending on the particular cow and where it is cut from. On top of that is a layer of fat and then another layer of meat. Butchers often remove the layer of fat and that top layer of meat.

Here is a video of one of my cooks of a plate short rib rack where I left the layer of fat. If you watch the section where I cut the ribs, you can see what I mean. These ribs turned out very juicy thanks to that layer of fat. YMMV.
https://youtu.be/fMRT4U29GYY

You can see in this picture that the fat layers differ depending on the rib bone. Let us know how your ribs turn out.