How do I instruct a butcher how to cut pork ribs?

[Huskee]

OK, so you don't have to have both elements on necessarily, good. Then you CAN do indirect. Looks like a good setup there. If you can verify you're at 225 (or close) and use a water pan with hot water in it, on the bottom pan as a buffer between the element and the ribs, from the beginning, you should be ok. It's probably not necessary to have the top element on, as long as you can maintain a good accurate temp.

Good job finding the indoor ribs recipe. It should be noted you can do the "Last Meal ribs" recipe indoors, you just wont have the smoke obviously. Those other recipes account for that with other seasoning profiles.

There is very little difference between your toaster oven there and an electric smoker, except there's no wood chips smoking. You can set it up for oven ribs!

[Lost in China]

A postscript: yesterday I went to the big grocery store, the one where the butcher is usually surly and doesn't want to do anything. I got him to cut me some ribs! Amazing, he usually sits on his chair and tells me he doesn't have whatever it is I ask for. I guess the secret is to go in at 4 in the afternoon when nobody's at the store and he's bored. Can anyone tell me if these look OK?



Photos came out super grainy for some reason but hopefully you can still see the details.

[Stoney]

Looks like over sized baby backs and under sized spares. Had he cut a bit closer toward the curved end, it would be close to what you get here (USA). At least thats what I gather from the photo.

[Lost in China]

Ah, OK. I'll tell him to cut closer to the curve next time. I'm learning!

There's still something wrong, though. I can get the oven to 225F just fine if I tune it to 100C (212F). I put in the tray of water, and two rows up the tray for the food, and on that tray I put my grill thermometer. Although the inside of my oven looks like a sauna, and the hot steam escaping loosened all the gunk stuck to the face of my microwave, the temperature just won't go above 175F. I tried higher and higher settings until I finally cranked the oven up to 400F and left it for twenty minutes. That made it about 185F. What am I doing wrong this time? It's set up just like in the photo, with the bottom rack full of water.

[Lost in China]

Last night I put those extra-long baby backs in the oven. Turned it to 100C (which was 225F when the oven was on with nothing in it), put the water pan in, and waited several hours. My thermo probe showed the meat at 135F and that's where it stopped. The meat was still pink inside after 3 hours. I cranked the oven up as far as it would go (500+ F), and still the temp inside the oven wasn't 225F. Anyone know what the problem is?

The instructions just say "set the oven for 225°F" and that's what I did. The water seems to be acting to keep the temperature down. I tried interpreting the instructions as "the air inside the oven must be 225F", but turning my oven up to the maximum didn't work. I'm at a loss.

Another problem I had was that the high humidity made the rub soggy and easy to fall off. Every time I grabbed the ribs with tongs to test for doneness, the tongs gashed big bare spots in the wet rub. I tried to cover them up, but touching the wet ribs just made things worse. At what point in the sauna process do they turn into crust? At the end I turned on the broiler for 5 minutes to try to crisp the crust, but all that happened was the part closest to the heating element started frying fat and burning.

After five hours I was starving to death and pulled the ribs. They were edible. Though hardly great. The photo shows that it's just a curved rib with a little bit of meat on it. The photos of sliced ribs here are almost a triangle, one end has a huge amount of meat on it, while the other end is bone. What's wrong with mine and why don't they look like the ones on the site?

[Huskee]

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this deduction...but I'm afraid it's the unique layout of your small oven. Water acts as a buffer and heat sink. Water will not get above 212, where it evaporates, and evaporates faster if the ambient temp gets higher. It could be that your cooker space is "filling" with water vapor/steam and therefore actually lowering and cooling your heating elements. In other words the volume of water to cooking environment is too high, so now the water is actually fighting your efforts instead of helping you.

This is my hypothesis.

My advice? Get a bigger oven/smoker/grill ASAP! Lol.

Otherwise, try less water in the pan. You still need it as the thermal barrier. Experiment. Eat. Repeat!

EDIT: You could try stacking the pans under the rack with the ribs, both of them underneath the ribs, and using no water. Perhaps these pans with their heat disbursement and air gap will function as enough of a buffer to avoid burning or directly cooking your ribs, and eliminate the water saturation issue you're facing.

[Lost in China]

Awesome! Thanks for the expert analysis and recommendations. I'll try that in a few days, I still have that other half of the rib cage in my fridge.

[David Parrish]

LiC I think you need a UDS (Ugly Drum Smoker). All you need is a food grade barrel and a little ingenuity.

http://amazingribs.com/links/build_your_own_bbq_smoker_grill.html

[David Parrish]

And check out this kit http://amazingribs.com/bbq_equipment...rum-smoker-kit

[Huskee]

Even a Weber kettle should be avail in China. A 22" will allow you to do a couple racks of ribs, and actually smoke them too.

[Lost in China]

I have a 17" Weber knockoff. The problem is that it's too cold outside to spend any time outdoors, and the store is out of charcoal. I also figured to do ribs in the oven so as to walk before I run, so to speak, and remove the additional complications of keeping constant temperature and smoke. I was wanting to do some dry test runs to see if I can control the temperature inside my grill, but I can't even do that right now.

[MattTheGR8]

So am I to understand that you're cooking the ribs with just the lower heating elements? If so, it may be that they simply don't have enough BTUs (or joules since China is on the metric system) to keep the oven at 225 while heating the water and a cold rack of ribs. Huskee's solution of reducing or eliminating the water would probably work. You could also stick with your current setup and try insulating the oven. Several folks around here who live in cold climates have posted pictures of insulated cookers that could give you some good ideas. As a last resort, you could try turning on the upper heating elements too, at least for brief periods of time. A foil pan placed over the ribs could act as a heat shield to keep the upper elements from burning the ribs.

As for the bark, Meathead has a great article here: http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/bark.html In a sauna with low temperatures and no airflow I fear you may never get a truly great bark.

The ribs themselves look pretty normal to me, except for the misplaced cut between the spare and back ribs that was previously noted. The cross section of the ribs changes as you move from one end of a rack to the other. With the triangular cross section you mention I think you're referring to that end of the back ribs that is closest to the shoulder.

[Lost in China]

Yes, just with the lower element. Thanks for the confirmation that the ribs look normal, because I don't have any basis of comparison. The packaged ribs just seem different to the eye than the same thing carved off a pig's carcass in front of you.

[Lost in China]

Wow, thanks to everyone for all the great comments. It's nice to know "I'm not alone". That's been the problem here for a long time, I have nobody to talk to or bounce ideas off of. This is even worse than the poverty of BBQ meats. It's wonderful to learn while doing, and to have actual sane people look at my issues and give me the benefit of their experience. Thanks everyone!

[David Parrish]

Like I said, we're glad you're here!

[DeusDingo]

i think i see how it might be able to be done with 2 racks. you could put the bottom rack way at the bottom and put a 9x13 pan with some water in it, put a wire rack for the ribs to sit on that take it above the water, and use the top rack to block the top burner. the hard part would be to find a wire rack tall enough that fits that isn't also too tall that your ribs would rub against the top rack with the ribs. that is me trying to be a problem solver.