Memorial Day Memphis Style

Posted: May 29th, 2010 | Author: Chris
Catagories: Personal | Tags: bbq, Memphis, ribs
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This is going to be a social media experiment. I want to share my experience as I cook ribs, and maybe get some feedback along the way. I’ll update this post along the way.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and I want to try a new rib rub, Meathead’s Memphis Dust Rub Recipe. I already made wet Memphis ribs back in February, but now it’s hot outside (95 F) and it’s a holiday weekend. Next to July 4th, I think Memorial Day is the best day to bbq. So, this time I’m going dry and rubbed; sauce will be on the table.

Ingredients

3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons ground ginger powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 teaspoons rosemary powder

Sides

Now, what sides? On Friday, I asked my wife if she would make potato salad. She wanted to make a pasta salad she found online. I thought maybe a 3-bean salad or corn or baked beans would make a good side dish. That’s how our ‘chat’ online usually goes: we throw out a bunch of ideas and pick one. Well, this time we picked them all. Saturday we went to the store and bought beans for the salad, corn, pasta, fresh parsley, fresh rosemary and a bunch of other things to make all but the baked beans.

Oh yeah, I also bought a big disposable pan. I suggest that you get a slab of ribs and put it in the pan to see if it fits. I made that mistake with the brisket last year. I also bought mesquite chips and a small disposable pan to put them in.

Preparation

Saturday night while I’m preparing the ribs, she was busy making 3-bean salad and pasta salad – from scratch! She was cutting herbs, cooking pasta and beans and bacon, mixing, tasting – hum. That was so time consuming and exhausting that the potato salad would have to wait until Sunday.

My rib rub was a little different from the Memphis Dust ingredients. First, I couldn’t find ginger powder or rosemary powder and I didn’t feel like making them myself. I added about 1 tablespoon ground cumin instead. Second, 1/2 cup paprika is a lot! I ran out at 1/4 cup so that’s all I used. The final rub was plenty spicy so I left out cayenne.

I sprinkled the rub on the meat side of the ribs, wrapped them up in plastic-wrap, and put them in the refrigerator to marinate overnight.

Grill

I have a three-burner gas grill so indirect cooking isn’t too hard. I just turn on one of the outside burners and place the pan on the opposite side of the grill. It is important to let the grill heat up and stabilize at between 220 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. So I put the pan with apple juice in it on the grill, lit the grill and closed the lid. It took about 20 minutes to heat up and stabilize at 220 degrees. I put about 1 quart of apple juice in the big pan. Then I put a cooking rack on top of the pan and put the ribs, meat-side up, on the rack.

It was hot outside; at least 95 degrees. I tried to do a video but I didn’t like it too much.

Results

All in all everything turned out pretty good. Ribs were tender, potato salad was tender, bean salad was crisp, and pasta salad was still good (after more ranch dressing).

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