This here’s my Dad, Jim Shirley, just retired VP of The American Angus Association and man of many meats. He’s been a good father and as such made sure that our table was never hurting for delicious cuts.

To show our appreciation and congratulate him on his retirement we recently bought him a Char-Griller – Outlaw Smoker, complete with the side fire box for proper Texas style smoking with indirect heat.  Seemed right and natural to get a fella with some time to kill a smoker.  I was also  secretly counting on him coming up with some recipes which we could try – lo and behold here is the first.

Here then in his own words are the results:

“I started with three racks of baby back ribs.  I removed the membrane on the bone side of the ribs by peeling it back at one corner with a knife until I could get a grasp of it and then pulled it back. A pair of pliers might work well to grasp the membrane but it can easily be done with your fingers.

After removing the membrane I coated the ribs with this rub:

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup paprika

2 tbsp sea salt

2 tbsp garlic

1 tbsp crushed red pepper

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp black pepper

I mixed the rub and coated the ribs very generously then wrapped them in cling wrap and kept them in the refrigerator over night.

The next morning I took the ribs out and allowed them to reach room temperature while the smoker was readied and reached 200 degrees. The smoker was fired by Kingsford charcoal and dry hickory chunks were added around the coals.

I placed the ribs on the grill bone side down and smoked them for two and one half hours at a pretty constant temp of 200 degrees adding coals and hickory chips as needed. I opened the cooking chamber once to rotate the ribs end for end but did not turn them over.

After the two and half hours I prepared an aluminum foil pouch for the ribs. In the bottom of the pouch I placed a layer of applesauce, not so much for flavor but more for moisture. Once the ribs we’re in the pouch I completely sealed the pouch taking care not to puncture the pouch intending that all of the moisture stay inside.

I then returned the ribs in the pouch to the smoker. The temperature was retained at about 180 to 200 degrees (hickory chips were not used once the ribs were in the aluminum foil). After a little over an hour and one half (actually closer to two hours) I opened the top of the pouch and exposed the ribs still in the pouch much like in a pan. I then lightly brushed two racks of the ribs with OA recommended Captain Curt’s Shazaam Boss Sauce and left the third rack dry. I left them all on the smoker in that manner for about one half hour.

The ribs were served with Captain Curt’s Boss Sauce on the side and in minutes the table looked as if a pack of coyotes had eaten. Every bone was clean and we were all smiles The drinks perhaps had some effect on the smiles but I really believe it was the ribs.

One thing that you might want to vary is the cooking time, The ribs were so tender that they fell of the bones when I removed them from the aluminum foil pouch for serving. Experiment with the cooking time but I believe that they would have been great with two and one half hours smoking and one and a half hours in the sealed pouch.”

Happy Eating!!!

Science News has a great piece on the American Chemical Society’s chem-themed cook out and it appears that eating your meats properly cooked, that is medium and rarer cuts your carcinogenic intake by, at times, 88%.

“Unfortunately, if you ask the [food] safety people they’ll tell you to cremate everything,” said Shirley Corriher, a food chemist and cookbook author from Atlanta. Meats should be cooked long enough to kill bacteria, she noted, but they don’t need to be cooked beyond medium to be truly safe. For one thing, carcinogenic chemicals called heterocyclic amines form when creatine — a substance found in muscle tissue — reacts at high temperatures with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The amount of HCAs formed in grilled meats typically triples if meats are cooked well done rather than medium well, she noted.

Other research-proven tricks for reducing HCAs, as noted in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, include using marinades, garlic and onion, said Risch. A marinade of red wine, for instance, can reduce the formation of HCAs by 88 percent, she noted. Although scientists aren’t sure exactly how these techniques work, moisture from marinades may ensure that the meat directly in contact with the grill remains at a relatively low temperature, she said.”

Read the full article here.