Beef

By : ivan | Comments Off on Beef | On : June 10, 2016 | Category :

1. Have you ever experienced the “brontosaurus” rib at Mighty Quinn’s in Manhattan? How about the 8-inch long beef plate ribs at La Barbecue Cuisine Texicana in Austin? Or the pastrami beef ribs elucidated in the amazing five-volumeModernist Cuisine cookbook by Nathan Myhrvold. I hope so—you should.
2. After decades of playing backup to the omnipresent, uber-popular pork baby back and sparerib, the beef rib has finally achieved star status of its own.
3. It’s about time. In the hands of a skilled pit master or mistress, beef ribs have no equal. (Triangulate brisket, tri-tip, and flank steak and you get an idea of the flavor.) Pork ribs, which famously outsell beef ribs, pale in comparison.
4. But which beef rib? You could start with beef back ribs. Unfortunately, you rarely see good ones at your butcher counter or in your supermarket’s meat department. You’re more likely to find what competition barbecuers derisively call“shiners”—back ribs with so much of the meat removed that there’s hardly anything left but shiny white bones with a few nuggets of protein connecting them. There’s an economic explanation for this: Butchers can sell prime rib roasts and steaks at much higher prices than back ribs, so have little incentive to leave expensive meat on the bones.
5. But more and more restaurants are serving monster beef plate ribs. The short list includes Hometown Bar-B-Que in Brooklyn and the Pecan Lodge in Dallas. In San Antonio, The Granary’s Tim Rattray cures beef plate ribs with pastrami seasonings, then smokes them over post oak (Texas’ fuel of choice). See a similar recipe in my book Best Ribs Evercalled Grandpa’s Barbecued Pastramied Short Ribs.

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