Porkosaurus Memphis in May Championship Ribs

Rib Date: December 28, 2013

Ribsters:  My father-in-law Douglas Shearer (visiting from Scotland), my Aunt Shirley Martin (visiting from Maine) and the Stults family.


We adjourned the standard pork ribs section of Steve Raichlen's book, "Ribs, Ribs, Ribs," with the "Porkosaurus Memphis in May Championship Ribs."  With a name like that, they must be good, right?  Eh.  They were alright.

The Porkosaurus ribs feature a three step cooking process.  After getting rubbed up, the ribs get smoked for two hours (I used cherry wood).  Step two is to baste the ribs liberally with pineapple juice and apple juice, wrap in foil and return to smoker for another hour.  The final step is to baste yet again with a BBQ sauce that's a hybrid of homemade and store-bought.  Then return to final hour on smoker.

Ribs after smoking, before being basted in juice

A lot of steps and four hours of cooking produced some decent, but not delicious, ribs. 

We served them with some delicious beans, corn muffins and nice bottle of South African wine my friend Andre Morganthal had given us (Secateurs Red Blend.)

The meat texture was fine; not fall off the bone, but not tough n chewy.  For me the disappointment was the hybrid BBQ sauce, the secret ingredient of which was balsamic vinegar, something that I'm not a huge fan of.

Final step - baste in BBQ sauce

Whereas I thought the ribs were OK and not particularly helped by the sauce, my wife Gill agreed the ribs were so/so but "The sauce made them."  She agreed with me that "the overall flavor wasn't reflective of the time and work that went into them."

Another thumbs up for the balsamic BBQ sauce came from my son Riain, who said, "I liked the vinegar in the sauce."

Aunt Shirl concurred.  "More sauce equals better ribs."

Daughter Eilidh, pushed for a comment, said she'd give them four out of five stars.  Since they weren't FOB (fall-off-the-bone) she withheld her fifth star.

My father-in-law approved, saying "The meat was nicely done; quite tender."  He also gets an assist, adding both coal and wood while I went to watch Napa High's freshmen basketball team lose a game. 

As we move to the "Beyond Baby Backs" section of the book, my wife astutely summed it up: "We're getting towards the end of the book and now we're overly critical."

Next: Jamaican Jerk Spareribs.  Yeah mon!