Smoke Them Ribs!

I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of pork ribs on the planet. Whenever I ordered baby back ribs in a restaurant, the eating never seemed user friendly, and the effort expended getting the meat off the bones didn't quite seem worth it. I'm sure this attitude has resulted in poor performance whenever I've tried to smoke pork back ribs. My efforts have been frustrating both for the smoker and for the eater. The ribs have always ended up too dry or overdone. Since I take pride in turning out smoked food which tastes great, I have gone to great lengths to avoid pork back ribs.

Well, this weekend, I found some pork spare ribs which looked too good to pass up! Spare ribs are much larger that back ribs, so I felt I had a good chance to NOT SCREW UP! Plus, I've had lots of success lately using a mustard slather to keep meat moist, so I was pretty sure I could smoke these ribs while keeping them nice and juicy.

I made a slather from:

1 part beer,
1/2 part olive oil,
1 part ball park mustard,
1 part yellow mustard and
3 tablespoons of brown sugar

I put these ingredients in a non-reative pan and let them simmer for half an hour to reduce some of the liquid. Then, I brushed all sides of the ribs (these came cut apart - another reason why I bought them) with the slather. I finished by sprinkling the ribs liberally with Saucy Joe's Ultimate Rub and set them in the smoker. Using apple chips for the smoke, and setting the temperature at 225 degrees F, I smoked those ribs for 2 1/2 hours. Then, I glazed them with a sweet BBQ sauce from (the more) Famous Dave's and smoked for another half hour.

These ribs were nice and moist, and they were plenty tasty! I'm thinking I've got something here! I have some pork back ribs in the freezer...maybe next weekend?

Anybody have suggestions for improvement?

Dr. Dave