Franken(stein?) Smoking

[RichPB (richlife)]

You learn something every day and sometimes unlearn and learn better. To start, I found that the 3 1/2 lbs of short ribs I bought at Costco were "sliced short ribs" (what?) which may be called Franken cut or crosscut short ribs. This was all new learning (and surprising) to me including re-learning that my new understanding of Franken cut (from extensive reading) was completely wrong. These were cut right on 3/8" and the silverskin was left on. After cutting off the exterior fat strip, this is what they looked like. (BTW, this is going to be a long tale.)


I'll be doing a mixed smoke today with a very hybrid recipe (also big surprise to me). The short ribs, some Costco Mixed Nuts, stuffed jalapenos (two styles) and chicken wings. The hybrid recipe is a mix of @K Kruger 's Metamorphosis rub with points from other Texas rub recipes and my own interpretations. (The rub smells great and the first sample cook was amazing!) Unfortunately the rib recipe got out of hand immediately. I was supposed to be basically the 1/4 cup rub, 1/4 cup spicy brown mustard, marinated ribs smoked with red wine. Oops -- no spicy brown mustard so I "winged" it with what I had. Some Dijon, some whole grain, some Honey mustard and some hot Chinese mustard. Mixed rub, mustards and ribs in a gallon freezer bag and then decided it needed more liquid, so added in a good spill of my open beer. After reading some other recipes (and learning that Franken style are use for Korean bbq, I also added a good spill of soy sauce. Remixed well (and often) and marinated overnight. It may seem crazy, but by this morning I was concerned it would all be too salty (though I only had 1 tbsp Kosher salt in the rub). So I fished out the smallest strip and put it on a hot (450* grill), each side 1 minute. Ok, man that was a wonderful, exciting piece of steak! (Forgot the pic, but the silverskin turned out not to be a problem.) So I put all the strips layered in a large aluminum pan and poured in about 6 oz cabernet sauvignon.

This is the ribs waiting for smoking temp along with the nuts in a steel colander left over from brewing days. Because the ribs are in the pan and about 4 layers deep, I plan to keep the temp down (225*?) and re-distribute the strips fairly often. It will extend the cook, but I want to be sure it all gets good smoke contact. Why not just smoke on the grate? Ok! I'll do that with some strips also. Once I have a couple of hours of smoking, I'll move the wine immersed slices to a slow cooker until I get to about 195*


I've smoked (or grilled) nuts successfully with the colander before, but never found a good recipe for lightly salted smoked nuts, so I decided to start with nuts that I like. They'll go on the smoker after the ribs go to the slow cooker. 20 - 30 minutes depending on the temp I have and then I'll move on to the jalapenos (most of which will get frozen after being smoked) and finally the wings.

More later.

 

[Brett-EDH]

Flanken.

What is Flanken?

Flanken is a cut of beef in which the ribs are cut lengthwise. Often featured in Asian dishes, flanken also works well for...

www.delightedcooking.com

Jews love ‘em as they used to be cheap and they’d slow cook them in cholent (stew) or in soup. Koreans perfected them. Some of the best ribs ever are Korean marinated flanken ribs. You’re about to enjoy them.

 

[RichPB (richlife)]

Well, the nuts were the biggest disappointment but not bad at all. Just a slight smokiness and the light salt sort of "melted" into the skin -- should have left them on for at least another 15 minutes.


The rib sections that were bare on the grate, were done after two hours (in the higher heat around the rim). They were tender to crisp and tasted excellent again although I preferred the strip that I grilled with no wine soak. We'll see how the wine immersed sections are -- they certainly smelled luscious. Now into the slow cooker. @Brett-EDH , it was good to hear about the stew. I thought last night about adding potatoes, onions and carrots, but almost forgot! But that's later...

For the stuffed jalapenos, I'm using my standard recipe ( https://tvwbb.com/threads/canned-jalapenos.92371/ ) with fresh, halved jalapenos with a little super sharp English cheddar added. Half are just per recipe, half are bacon wrapped. I'll smoke them 1 to 1-1/2 hours, then finish on the grill if needed or after thawing when appropriate.

Last up will be the baking powder/fridge dried wings with jerk sauce. (My wife got some separately for her air fryer since she can't have food from my smoker or grill and doesn't do heat.) All the above items were done at temps 225-250* with the water pan. Before adding the wings, I want to take the upper sections off, add the vortex rings to get higher temps and remove the water pan completely. Just trying to learn more about this 14.5. One thing I really like is that the lighter weight (than my previous 18") makes lifting the upper sections easy and no threat to my back.
The wing cooking temp got up to 335* before I decided to take them off. Decently crisp and actually were excellent as were those jalapenos.


So by this time I had a decent dinner, but the wine smoked ribs were just in to stew. Later I sampled a portion and found that, as @Brett-EDH said, it is excellent. It will make an excellent Sunday dinner.

Having now been able to try everything and had a successful cook all around, I guess the only thing to add is that of the three ways I tried the Franken short ribs, the one I preferred was the fast, hot grilled rub-crusted one. That really makes me want to try again with standard cut short ribs sometime soon (sad, three tries and never quite managed to get the right cut). The wine-smoked on open grate strips were also really good, but just not the same. The stewed, smoked Franken ribs are totally awesome. I'm looking forward to more than just a taste. This pic is shortly after starting in the crock pot, the finished stew is much prettier looking with deeper color -- so colorful you could almost taste it. But I didn't get that pic...