Yesterday I decided to do a showdown between some regular Prairie Farms commodity pork baby back ribs from WalMart and some heritage Berkshire St. Louis cut pork ribs from Wild Fork.
Now, I had placed an order earlier in the week from Wild Fork, split half of it with my friend and man was I surprised at the variability of the meat sizes and weights. For the St. Louis ribs, it says on the website, ~2.75 lbs. Well, 3 of the 4 racks were just over 3 lbs, but one of them was a damned baby rack of 1.75 lbs! I'm telling you, this thing looks like it was cut from a piglet! The 4 racks totaled apparently 11.96 lbs. So on average, they were around 3lb each, but I don't know WTH I am going to do with piglet St. Louis ribs, seriously.
Anyways, I digress.
Seasoning was simple, just salt and 16 mesh black pepper, because I wanted to really be able to taste a difference between the two types of pork. Now, I know I'm comparing baby backs to St. Louis, but this is what I had on hand, and it's what I had to use. So... maybe that variable could have been controlled, but, I had other things going on.
I spent the day out at my friend's house, running the big stickburner to help him learn how to do brisket. We trimmed it up Thursday night and salted it, let it sit in the fridge until Sat morning, then pulled it out, rubbed some mustard on it (it did NOT dry out on the outside like I would have expected with 36 hours open in the fridge) and sprinkled liberally with black pepper. onto the smoker it went, we used cherry splits on it all day.
Here's some of the brisket cook:
We ended up wrapping it at 165-170ºF in the flat, he cooked it a couple more hours after I left, then pulled around 190ish, let cool to 168 on the counter, wrapped in foil and into the fridge to be brought up to temp in the oven today for Sunday Family Dinner. I suppose I'll see how it comes out when he tells me. lol
As for the ribs, I didn't get any pics of the process, sadly, but here are the results:
I am really enjoying the S&P-only ribs I've been doing lately. It's a change, of course, from my usual MMD+, but it really allows the pork flavors to shine on their own. And, of course, in this head-to-head, I think it's necessary to really evaluate the differences in the pork breeds.
Both The Wife and I picked the same rib for flavor, the St. Louis cut from Wild Fork, the Berkshire heritage breed. She was pretty adamant the smokiness on the baby backs from WalMark (Prairie Fresh) had more smoke flavor on them, though these were cooked literally side by side in the same big offset smoker. I didn't notice that difference, but I'd been tending the smoker all day, as well as putting out a moderate grass fire (different story) that developed... somehow. Anyways... moving on...
The Berkshire pork definitely had a more succulent flavor. It was slightly deeper, but much richer overall. The difference was noticeable in this context, but if I were to make these in the 'traditional' way using a more complex dry rub, I do believe it would have obscured a lot of this. In addition, some of the richness may have come from being a St. Louis rib over the commodity baby back, but if you look at the picture above, these St. Louis were actually pretty lean and not big thick hearty fatty ones like you see at the store in the Prairie Fresh or Smithfield brands. So while some of the flavor might have come from the difference in the cut, I also think the Berkshire definitely made a difference. As I said, we both picked that out, and The Wife didn't know she was taste testing different breeds, only 'skinny' vs 'fat'. Overall, at $8.99/ lb, I was pleased with the Berkshire ribs, but I don't see myself doing it a lot, and like someone mentioned ( @CandySueQue maybe?) I don't think these are the best choice for competition.
I think it was a worthwhile experiment, and the serious smoke imparted by the stickburner was very much appreciated.
Hope this helps someone in making a choice on heritage breed pork ribs.
Now, I had placed an order earlier in the week from Wild Fork, split half of it with my friend and man was I surprised at the variability of the meat sizes and weights. For the St. Louis ribs, it says on the website, ~2.75 lbs. Well, 3 of the 4 racks were just over 3 lbs, but one of them was a damned baby rack of 1.75 lbs! I'm telling you, this thing looks like it was cut from a piglet! The 4 racks totaled apparently 11.96 lbs. So on average, they were around 3lb each, but I don't know WTH I am going to do with piglet St. Louis ribs, seriously.
Anyways, I digress.
Seasoning was simple, just salt and 16 mesh black pepper, because I wanted to really be able to taste a difference between the two types of pork. Now, I know I'm comparing baby backs to St. Louis, but this is what I had on hand, and it's what I had to use. So... maybe that variable could have been controlled, but, I had other things going on.
I spent the day out at my friend's house, running the big stickburner to help him learn how to do brisket. We trimmed it up Thursday night and salted it, let it sit in the fridge until Sat morning, then pulled it out, rubbed some mustard on it (it did NOT dry out on the outside like I would have expected with 36 hours open in the fridge) and sprinkled liberally with black pepper. onto the smoker it went, we used cherry splits on it all day.
Here's some of the brisket cook:
We ended up wrapping it at 165-170ºF in the flat, he cooked it a couple more hours after I left, then pulled around 190ish, let cool to 168 on the counter, wrapped in foil and into the fridge to be brought up to temp in the oven today for Sunday Family Dinner. I suppose I'll see how it comes out when he tells me. lol
As for the ribs, I didn't get any pics of the process, sadly, but here are the results:
I am really enjoying the S&P-only ribs I've been doing lately. It's a change, of course, from my usual MMD+, but it really allows the pork flavors to shine on their own. And, of course, in this head-to-head, I think it's necessary to really evaluate the differences in the pork breeds.
Both The Wife and I picked the same rib for flavor, the St. Louis cut from Wild Fork, the Berkshire heritage breed. She was pretty adamant the smokiness on the baby backs from WalMark (Prairie Fresh) had more smoke flavor on them, though these were cooked literally side by side in the same big offset smoker. I didn't notice that difference, but I'd been tending the smoker all day, as well as putting out a moderate grass fire (different story) that developed... somehow. Anyways... moving on...
The Berkshire pork definitely had a more succulent flavor. It was slightly deeper, but much richer overall. The difference was noticeable in this context, but if I were to make these in the 'traditional' way using a more complex dry rub, I do believe it would have obscured a lot of this. In addition, some of the richness may have come from being a St. Louis rib over the commodity baby back, but if you look at the picture above, these St. Louis were actually pretty lean and not big thick hearty fatty ones like you see at the store in the Prairie Fresh or Smithfield brands. So while some of the flavor might have come from the difference in the cut, I also think the Berkshire definitely made a difference. As I said, we both picked that out, and The Wife didn't know she was taste testing different breeds, only 'skinny' vs 'fat'. Overall, at $8.99/ lb, I was pleased with the Berkshire ribs, but I don't see myself doing it a lot, and like someone mentioned ( @CandySueQue maybe?) I don't think these are the best choice for competition.
I think it was a worthwhile experiment, and the serious smoke imparted by the stickburner was very much appreciated.
Hope this helps someone in making a choice on heritage breed pork ribs.
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