St. Louis Spares at Publix


 
B

Bryan B

TVWBB Fan
Hi all,

I just noticed yesterday that my Publix sells St. Louis cut spare ribs. The price is $3.99/lb, not bad for Publix. I love Publix but sometimes the meat prices are high.

Has anyone smoked Publix St. Louis ribs before?

Just wondering if they generally turn out good Q. I've used their baby backs before and it is kind of hit or miss. Sometimes the fat content is so low I end up drying them out.

I've heard that most competitors use spare ribs as they are fattier and harder to dry out, so I wanted to give these a shot.

I believe St. Louis cut just means the riblet section is removed and the membrane is removed. Can anyone confirm if they are cut this way? If so, that would be great so that I can just use them straight out of the box.

Thanks,

Bryan
 
I've used publix StL cut spares before. They're just spares with the flap meat, tips, and end pieces trimmed to "square" them up a bit. I like to cut my own so I get to keep and cook all that stuff to include in beans, tacos, nachos, quesadillas, etc, etc.
 
I buy them all the time when on sale, often in the low two dollar range. It depends on the butcher who cuts them from my experience. First, the membrane has always been left on the one's I've bought. Two, the cut has not always been a pure St. Louis cut, sometimes with way more trimming left on, and sometimes, right down to a true cut. The last time I bought some they were a true cut with just a little touch-up work to do.............................d
 
That's awful expensive, especially for a pig in a poke sort of trim job. Fyi, IBP spares and some other brands already have the brisket bone cut off, but Publix is one of those stores that if it's not on sale, it isn't going in the buggy.
 
Dave Russell said:
That's awful expensive, especially for a pig in a poke sort of trim job. Fyi, IBP spares and some other brands already have the brisket bone cut off, but Publix is one of those stores that if it's not on sale, it isn't going in the buggy.
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How much do spares usually cost? I'm a little ignorant on this I guess. I've been scared to buy them before because I was unsure of how to trim them up St. Louis style. When I saw these pre-trimmed ones at Publix, I decided to buy them and take a chance on them.

I had a bad experience with ribs containing alot of "grissle" once and that kind of turned me off. Those were from Walmart though. Is the "grissle" usually in the part of spare ribs that are trimmed off when converting to St. Louis style?
 
Bryan B said:
Is the "grissle" usually in the part of spare ribs that are trimmed off when converting to St. Louis style?
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Yes. It's the bone and other tidbits trimmed off to make the StL cut. Once you have StL ribs all you have left is bones and meat ...and maybe a button of cartlidge at the tip of the bones but nothing I would catagorize as "grissle".

This is three racks of StL cut spare ribs in the middle (note the trim piece furthest away and the trim pieces closest to you:

IMG_1244_zps1e035bc4.jpg


Here is the rest of the trimmings (bone pieces, flap meat, etc):

IMG_1243_zps27a63846.jpg
 
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Bryan B said:
How much do spares usually cost? I'm a little ignorant on this I guess. I've been scared to buy them before because I was unsure of how to trim them up St. Louis style. When I saw these pre-trimmed ones at Publix, I decided to buy them and take a chance on them.

I had a bad experience with ribs containing alot of "grissle" once and that kind of turned me off. Those were from Walmart though. Is the "grissle" usually in the part of spare ribs that are trimmed off when converting to St. Louis style?
Click to expand...

Bryan, other than Restaurant Depot, the only other place I'd probably buy St. Louie's would be Costco. Around here their main brand is Swift, and they were $2.99 lb. last time I was there. I've only smoked them one time, and they had almost as much of the rib tip cut off as I would cut...not a bad trim. As Dwain said, that's where most of the cartilage is, but there will be a little bit left as shown in his pic. Here's a link to a help that Chris put together on prepping spares and trimming:

http://virtualweberbullet.com/spareribprep.html
 
I've noticed that Publix's sale prices are roughly the same as Sam's/Costco's normal prices. I've also noticed that each store seems to have a person trimming their meats. I know of one store that has somebody that actually knows what they're doing, the rest that I've seen are truly meat butchers (in the non-flattering sense). I much prefer to get an IBP 3 rack cryo-pack from Sam's and trim them up myself, even if that means that I vacu-suck two of the racks for a later date.

Russ
 
I just stopped by my local IGA grocery store and saw that they had family paks of spare ribs on sale for 1.99 a pound. You can save some money by just buying the spares and trimming them yourself. No need to feel intimidated by trimming them as there are numerous you tube videos showing how to properly trim them to st. louis style.
 
Matt Gard said:
I just stopped by my local IGA grocery store and saw that they had family paks of spare ribs on sale for 1.99 a pound. You can save some money by just buying the spares and trimming them yourself. No need to feel intimidated by trimming them as there are numerous you tube videos showing how to properly trim them to st. louis style.
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Thanks, I will do this next time. $2.00 a pound is a huge savings. The ribs came out great, I will post pictures in a little bit.
 
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