Smoking short ribs with a marinade

[Paolo Wyatt]

Hi all, hope you're all well. I've got some nice Jacob's ladder beef short ribs to cook this weekend. Every time I've done this before I've gone pretty traditional - salt and pepper and some smoking wood in the coals for flavour. I want to do on my WSK again but want to either do a Korean (gochujang vibes) or Mexican (ancho vibes) this time. Any help on how best to do that? Do I marinade and smoke? Or do I smoke then add sauce at the end? Half way through? Conscious if smoke with marinade from the start it may prevent a bark forming. Thanks a lot

 

[Dick Reynolds]

For myself, I would prefer a good bark and sauce later. Love short ribs, what times dinner???

 

[Paolo Wyatt]

For myself, I would prefer a good bark and sauce later. Love short ribs, what times dinner???

Be here for 5pm!

 

[Mike Shook]

Agree with Dick. I am always cautious about the intermix between the smoke and commercial sauces applied at the beginning of the smoke. Many of them play nice together, but sometimes the smoke just changes the flavor in unpleasant ways - smoke gets absorbed more than you want, or the sauce gets bitter, whatever. So I would either go ahead with your concept but have a Plan B standing by for dinner just in case, or do a test run ahead of time with the sauce on a hunk of meat you aren't counting on for dinner necessarily. FWIW.

 

[TonyUK]

S&P and a bit of smoke wood is just fine. Serve the sauce(s) on the side for dippage purposes. Let the JL speak for itself.