pork spare ribs didn't turn out as good as last time...

[Chad_M]

I thought I had figured out, but my cook yesterday had only average results.

Ribs were a little over done on surface, like tough bark, but still had some fat layers on the interior. They pulled apart easy, but not uniformly through out the meat.

I cooked 6lbs standing up in a rack for about 5 hours at 270 according to the lid gauge. I rotated and flipped them after 2 hours. I did not foil them or baste them.

I did spares last year like this too, and they were excellent. I think the big difference may have been source for the meat. Yesterday was grocery store, and they were big. Last fall was small organic farm, and they were much smaller.

Any other ideas to help this? Maybe foiling would have helped keep the outside less bark and the inside rendered better?

Chad

 

[Nicolas]

mine never come out consistent across the whole rack but i've always assumed that was because the rack isn't of uniform thickness all the way across. i'll be interested to see what people have to say about that.

 

[Bob Sample]

I would imagine that the local organic meat was probably a leaner pig then what you would get from mass produced factory farm pigs.

Foiling will soften the outside of the rib up and will cook the rib faster. Large meaty racks also have a tendency to have a greater variation in the thickness from one end to the other which can give you fall apart on one end and pull apart on the other end. I personally hate fall off the bone ribs so a little fat is all right with me to avoid that.