Lone Star Beef RibsLone Star Beef Ribs

Makes 4 to 8 servings

Renowned Texas pit masters the likes of Wayne Mueller and John Lewis have elevated the classic Texas–style beef ribs to iconic status. Little flurries of fat and marbling throughout the meat make for rich flavor and unrivaled melt-in-your-mouth tenderness, punctuated with spicy bursts of pepper from the gorgeously crusty bark.

Beef ribs come in 3- or 4-bone sections, and they weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 to 8 pounds per section. There will be some shrinkage during the cooking process; the finished rack will end up weighing 3 to 4 pounds. Just like pork ribs, there are different cuts of ribs butchered from a cow—back, plate, and chuck ribs. We like to use the plate ribs, but the chuck ribs are sometimes easier to find and a little less expensive. They’re often labeled simply “short ribs.”

Outside of Texas, this can be a hard cut to find. Request them from your butcher or mail-order from Snake River Farms (see Resources).

Pitmasters judge the doneness of their beef ribs by pressing the meat with a finger—if it goes in up to the first knuckle, it’s done. But until you’re very experienced, it’s best to use an instant-read thermometer. Unlike baby backs, beef ribs are meaty enough to check this way, and you’ll know they’re done both by the temperature (between 195° and 210°) and by the way the thermometer probe slides in smoothly, like you’re poking it into a stick of butter.

Prep the meat: Remove any membrane from the back of the rack, especially if there’s a heavy sheathing, and use a spoon to scrape off any excess fat. Coat the entire rack of ribs with a thin layer of Mustard Slather and sprinkle generously with dry rub. Put the rack on a baking sheet, loosely cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until you’re ready to put it on the cooker.

Note: You can apply the rub to the ribs up to 4 hours prior to cooking, but if they sit much longer than that, the salt in the rub will begin to pull moisture from the meat.

Set up the cooker for indirect-heat smoking: Open the top and bottom vents. Pile 3 pounds of the charcoal in one half of the cooker, leaving the other half empty. Load a charcoal chimney one-quarter full of charcoal and light it. When the coals in the chimney are glowing, dump them on top of the pile of charcoal already in the cooker. Set half the wood on top of the coals, replace the grate, and put the ribs over the side with no coals (the indirect cooking area), bone side down. Close the lid.

Don’t open the cooker for 1 hour, but keep a close eye on the temperature (see page 84 for how best to assess and monitor cooker temperature); when it reaches 230°, which might happen very quickly, close the vents about halfway so that less air comes in to feed the fire and the heat in the cooker rises slowly. Let the temperature climb to between 250° and 275° (see page 77 for how to determine your target temperature). Maintain your target temperature for the duration of the cook.

Throughout the entirety of the cook, be on the lookout for fluctuations in cooker temperature; whenever it dips more than 5° and opening the vents isn’t sufficient to bring it back up, it’s time to add a few hot coals from the chimney. You’ll need to prepare another round of charcoal every few hours as needed. If at any point the temperature climbs above your target by more than 5°, close the top and bottom vents further so that even less air comes in to feed the fire.

Continue smoking the ribs for another hour, periodically checking the temperature and color of the meat; rotate as needed to brown evenly. Use an instant-read thermometer to check the temperature of the meat: Insert the probe into a rib, not touching bone. You’re looking for a slow and steady climb toward 175°. As the wood burns throughout the cook, continue to add the other pieces until the meat reaches between 135° and 140°.

Continue cooking the ribs, checking internal temperature every 30 minutes or so, until the temperature of the thickest part of a rib reads between 175° and 180°. Take the ribs off the cooker, wrap them in pink butcher paper, and return them to the cooker. (Don’t worry, the paper won’t catch fire.) Cook the ribs for another hour, or until the internal temperature is between 185° and 190° (you can poke the probe right through the paper). Transfer the wrapped ribs to the cooler, close the lid, and leave the parcel be in the cooler for at least 1 hour and up to 3 hours.

Note: If you don’t want to use the wrapping/cooler method, cook the ribs to an internal temperature between 195° and 200°, then set them on a cutting board to rest, uncovered, for 20 to 30 minutes.

To serve, cut the rack into single-bone sections. One bone per person is a generous serving; each individual bone will weigh about 1 pound. Alternatively, slice the meat off the bones and serve in smaller portions.