How Austin’s Best BBQ Pork Ribs are Made

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My name is Kareem El Ghayesh.

I am the owner of KG Barbecue in Austin

and today I'm making our perfect version

of the smoked pork ribs.

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KG Barbecue is the perfect marriage of Egyptian street food

and Texas barbecue.

There's quite a few factors that make great pork rib.

There's a really fine line

between undercook and overcooking.

You want to have a nice little bend,

a nicer relaxation in the rack of pork,

but you also don't want it to fall apart.

The second component is the flavor.

What makes our pomegranate glazed pork ribs so unique is

how familiar it looks when you go and eat it,

but the flavors are way different.

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This is a rack of pork ribs. I like to look at two things.

The marbling is number one.

Well the marbling is the intramuscular fats that you see

inside the fibers of the meat,

and that really just gives you an edge.

You start with a product

that is just gonna be more juicy than any other product.

The second thing is the size and the thickness of the rack.

I like to cook, you know the thicker, bigger racks.

They do tend to take a little bit longer time,

but they're more forgiving when you cook them.

The first thing I'm gonna do is just open this up

and get it trimmed.

I wanna start with my six inch boning knife.

This is the most common knife that I use.

I like to use a honing steel

to kind of keep the blade aligned.

It makes it feel a lot sharper.

I have a meat hand

and a clean hand, so I always handle all my spices, my knife

and everything with the meatless hand.

And that's how you kind of stay clean.

The reason why we trim proteins is

they're not necessarily shaped in the way

that they would cook the most evenly.

We just kind of wanna trim off the excess parts

and remove the breast bone.

One of my favorite butcher terms is that you want

to make the ribs knifeable,

knifeable means that you can cut through it with a knife.

There's a lot of super thin edges here.

I just want to come in and square it off.

I do the same thing when I'm smoking racks of lamb as well.

Let's talk about the membrane here.

If your rack is undercooked, the membrane will be tough

and it's not be a pleasant bite or chew,

but if your rack is overcooked,

the membrane in fact helps keep it together.

But if you cook it perfectly,

you're not gonna worry about it.

I'm going to remove the membrane

and just show you how to do it.

So you want to get a paper towel.

So I'm gonna come in with this,

now this rack is ready to season.

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You need two components to make the your rack of pork ribs.

Number one is the rub, two is the sauce.

Now we're gonna make our spice rub.

We're gonna start by combining our ingredients.

You want to use kosher salt

and you want to use pre-ground coarse black pepper.

The reason why we use coarse spices is

to create the crispy bark.

If you use finer spices, the salt will start

to pull out the moisture and dissolve all the spices

and it's gonna have a more of a shiny, glossy finish.

It's not gonna have this rigid texture to it.

Granulated garlic, this SPG salt, pepper, garlic,

very common in the barbecue world.

To make my rub a little bit more unique,

I like to add a little bit of Greek oregano.

I like to use the more coarse grind on the oregano

for the unique ingredients that go

and make this pork ribs more of a staple

and this is really what surprises people.

We add ground coriander.

Coriander is a very common spice in Egyptian cuisine.

Last but not least is ground sumac.

Sumac is a dried berry native to the middle East.

We have sumac here in Texas,

but I don't advise that you eat it

'cause sometimes it's poisonous.

I learned that recently.

This will add a little bit of tanginess

and a little bit of sour zestiness to the rack of pork ribs,

which is super unique, you don't really see that.

Every pork rib that you get in Texas

or in the barbecue world is very much on the sweet forward.

We're gonna go in and mix this spice rub,

I highly recommend to let the rack sit in the rub

for a little bit.

And the nice thing about letting it sit in the rub is

that you're pulling out the moisture surface

and that is evaporating

and you're gonna have a drier surface,

which means a crispier pork.

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I'll make the pomegranate barbecue sauce.

Another main reason why our ribs are special,

I love the kind of messy rib.

It's like you don't really eat a good rib

if you are not licking your fingers after that.

Here in central Texas we do a ketchup-based sauce,

which is my preferred style as well.

So we're gonna start with a base of ketchup.

To that, we're gonna add pomegranate juice.

It's an antioxidant.

I love drinking it at home with sparkling water.

I love putting it in cocktails.

It has this beautiful tartness to it.

We have kosher salt, we have granulated onion,

granulated garlic, also more sumac,

we have cumin and cinnamon.

Now for a little bit of heat

we're gonna add a little bit of sriracha.

Now we're gonna add Worcestershireserser sauce,

I hope I said it right this time,

Dijon mustard, brown sugar.

We got black pepper. We have apple cider vinegar.

A lot of these ingredients you see

in classic Texas-style barbecue sauces.

Last but not least is the pomegranate molasses.

Pomegranate molasses is not just straight-up sweet sugar,

it does add sweetness,

but it gives you this nice balance of tangy as well.

We're just gonna mix it

and let it kind of come up to a simmer.

I really don't wanna cook it that much,

I just want all the ingredients

to combine and come together.

Simmer it for about five to 10 minutes

and it should be all done.

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When we're smoking barbecue,

we always like to use a binder or a slather.

It's more commonly referred to as a slather here in Texas,

it's pretty much an adhesive.

You're adding a layer of a sauce

or something that is moist to help your dry rub to stick.

I do actually like to use sriracha,

adds a heat, adds flavor, adds color to the pork ribs,

which is more required when you're cooking pork

compared to lamb or beef.

You can just get away with salting ribeye

or salting a lamb chop.

But if you just salt a pork chop,

it's not gonna be as good.

And that is why I chose to use a little bit of a more

of a flavor in my slather.

Now we're gonna go in with the spice rub.

I'm using all these classic shakers.

They're great for spice rubs.

When you are seasoning with this shaker,

it's a lot more even than using your hand.

And as you pick it up, you can see nothing falls down a bit.

It's really because of that slather,

because of the adhesive that we apply to it.

Flip and repeat what we've done, and it's all ready.

I highly recommend that you let this sit

for a few hours in your fridge.

If you smoke something that is cold, you allow for more time

for pork development, for smoke absorption,

smoke in fact adheres better to surfaces that are cold.

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Now we're out here at the smoker trailer,

and before I put the pork ribs on the smoker,

I just wanna make sure my fire is going well, so open here,

we use post oak, it's a blessing of central Texas.

It's in high abundance.

Kind of break down my fire and reset it.

First of all, you wanna pick the right wood.

It should be hard wood, it should be seasoned.

That means it should have been cut

and set for at least a year.

So it's nice and dry.

And when you throw it in, you wanna see it burning.

You wanna see flames just like that.

If you put in wood that is too green or too wet

or not seasoned yet, it is gonna become extremely smoky.

It's not gonna combust, it's not gonna burn.

We're looking to smoke at about 250 to 275.

We do tend to cook on the higher end, 275 more,

because we have one smoker at this point

and we cook kind of everything on it

and we open and close all the time.

So we try to keep it hot.

This is a 1,000 gallon propane tank that has been recycled

and welded to another tank.

That is the fire box.

And over here we have the smoke stack or the chimney.

And these are the main three components

that you see in any smoker.

We're gonna go ahead and open this door right here.

We're gonna add our rack of pork ribs here on the top shelf.

This rack is gonna go on the smoker for about three hours.

The smoker is running at 275 right now.

Pork ribs can be a little finicky to cook sometimes.

The challenging thing about smoking a perfect rack

of pork ribs is probably the that fine line of knowing when

to pull it when it's ready.

If you pull it too early,

you're gonna have an unpleasant chewy bite

that is tough and is not tender.

If you pull it too late, it's gonna be too dry,

it's gonna be too crumbly, too soft.

All right, we'll see you later.

All right, the main visual that you're looking for

is the nice color

because after you wrap you do not develop any more color.

So I wanna open the rack

and I wanna see this beautiful, dark, reddish,

mahogany color.

I also don't wanna see any bone pulling away.

The bone pulling away on the rack of ribs

means that it's getting close to be done.

So that's a good sign here that I'm opening

and getting to wrap before the rack is done.

The main reason we wrap as well is

because you wanna steam it a little bit,

you want to tenderize the rack.

If you cook it all the way unwrapped,

a lot of times you end up drying it.

So now we're gonna lay it right here on the spoil,

shiny side, inside or outside, doesn't matter.

I was so curious at some point that I had to look it up,

wrap it nice and tightly,

and this is gonna go back to the smoker

for about another hour, hour and a half

until it gets tender.

It's been about an hour, so let's go and check on this.

I'm gonna pick this rack up,

without really having to unwrap it or anything

there is ways you can know where it, where it's at,

and that's really by the bend,

so you guys can see it's,

it is bending a little bit more,

but I can feel that it's not too soft.

So this is what you're looking for,

if you go and pick up the rack and it feels too soft

and it feels like it's breaking up,

that's unfortunately, it's overcooked.

If you go and pick it up and it feels so tense

and firm, that's undercooked.

So you want to keep practicing

until you get that right doneness.

The right doneness is when you bite on the rib

and it doesn't just slide all of it in your mouth.

A lot of the fat is rendered and now it's kind of brazing

and steaming in it as well.

And this rack is ready to glaze.

We're gonna take it outta the foil,

put it back on the smoker with the sauce

that we made earlier.

We like to put it in these, you know,

fancy chef bottles here.

Now you can have a brush or something on here,

but I like to glaze on the heavier side

and just make sure everything is nice and coated.

This sauce is a little bit thin

and consistency by design to make it also work as a glaze.

You can see how it looks like now, a nice even layer,

not too thin, not too thick of a layer of barbecue sauce.

We're gonna let this cook for like 10 minutes at the most.

Now it's gonna look a lot darker, a lot more caramelized,

and this flavor is gonna pop

when you cut the ribs and taste them.

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Now the pork ribs have been glazed

for about 10 minutes or so.

We've pulled them

and now they're resting in the hot box right here.

This is a temperature, humidity-controlled device

that keeps your meats hot.

You can proof bread in this.

There's a lot of beautiful uses you can use this equipment.

Let's see how this look like.

We've cooked a few racks here today for service,

so they look beautiful.

Nice glaze here. It's not too dry.

I don't like to pull them when they are fully caramelized

and already dry in the surface.

I like to maintain a little bit

of that kind of wet moisture on the surface,

if you have this pull,

the meat is pulling away from the bone about, you know,

half an inch or so, that's a very good indicator

that your ribs are in a good place.

We still see that bend, it's not cracking open,

if it cracks open or breaks up,

it's definitely an overcooked rack.

But these look great.

We want to go in

and pour the rest of that sauce over the rib.

Let's go ahead and cut them.

The tricky part with the rack of pork

is that the bones will run different directions,

if you flip the rack you have a lot more vision

where the bones are running and it's a lot easier.

I personally don't like to do that

or you can do that in the beginning,

but eventually you want to cut when the rack is sitting up

like that so that you're not ruining the presentation side

of the rack.

Your knife should go in really easily,

if you are hitting a bone, stop what you're doing

and just go in a different angle.

Nice pull from the bone,

I can feel it's very tender but it's not falling apart.

The moisture is not gushing out of it,

it's not escaping too quickly.

That means it's well rested, it's a beautiful cook,

and the part where you get to be creative

and the part where you get to make art

is how your food looks.

I just love taking the time to make the food look beautiful

and pretty and stunning so that when I cook a spread

that I want, you know, people to absorb the visuals of it

first before they even dive into the flavors and eat it.

We're gonna now dust it with some za'tar.

Za'tar is a Lebanese spice blend.

It doesn't have salt in it.

It gives you a nice earthy, herby flavor.

It has sesame seed so it gives a nice texture

and a beautiful look to the rib as well.

And that's also the one of the reasons why I like my rib

to kind of have this moist surface

so that the za'tar can stick on it

and is a little bit of the barbecue sauce

that we made earlier for dipping.

Add sumac onions on the tray as well.

Last but not least,

I like to sprinkle a few pomegranate seeds on top.

I like to treat the people that order big trays

with some nice little flags,

only at KG Barbecue, where Egypt meets Texas.

I'm gonna give this a try.

Hmm, beautiful, it comes right outta the bone.

It's not overcooked, it's not too dry, nice tang.

Cheers, y'all.

Come see me in Austin and get some Egyptian barbecue.

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