Directions
Today we are talking about planking, a barbecue cooking technique carried out by cooking the meat on a wooden board, a cedar plank, more precisely.
The benefits of this type of barbecue cooking are soon said: you can cook the meat with direct and indirect heat on your barbecue, adding a good quantity of smoke, thus transforming your “smooth” barbecue into a smoker.
Without spending a cent or waiting hours and hours of cooking.
The meat cooked on the cedar plank enjoys the smoke emitted by the wood itself and gets impregnated with additional aromas and flavors, creating a symphony of flavors that mixes with the layers of barbecue sauce: an absolute delight.
The only precaution is that the tablet must be clean and natural and be left immersed in water for at least 1 hour before cooking.
Otherwise, it would burn out in a few moments. That’s all. Once you discover planking, your way of making barbecue will change, you can cook vegetables and fish with a double oven and smoker effect together! And to celebrate planking, let’s start with classic beef ribs with barbecue sauce.
Ingredients for beef ribs with barbecue sauce
5 servings
- 35 grams of ground pepper
- 35 grams of salt
- 35 grams of garlic powder
- 15 grams of cayenne pepper
- 1 wooden tablet
- 80 grams of barbecue sauce
- 2,5 kg of beef ribs
How to prepare beef ribs on the barbecue with cooking on the bar
Let’s start with a small note: pay attention to the material of the tablet. Each one will “pass” its particular scents to the chops: cherry and sweet cedar notes, the smokiest oak, do some tests and look for the taste you like.
The first step to perfect ribs is to leave the bar soaked for at least 1 hour. Part of the cooking will be in direct heat on the embers, so to avoid seeing the firefighters swoop into the garden, the board should be of good quality, “thick,” and above all, well soaked in water.
Let’s move on to the ribs. Remove from the refrigerator at least 1 hour before cooking. Remove the membrane. Use a sharp knife and slide the knife between the membrane and the bone to do so. Once a flap of the membrane has been detached, pull, and it should come off. Otherwise, help yourself with the knife. If it slips, use kitchen paper to have more grip on the membrane.
As you may have noticed, the rub for these beef ribs is very minimal, but, compared to pork ribs, they are much tastier, but also pay attention to cooking, which is faster, since they have less meat.
Prepare the barbecue for two-zone cooking, one direct and one indirect, calculating a temperature of approximately 120 degrees.
Season the ribs with the rub, place them on the cedar plank, and put them on the grill.
Cooking of the beef ribs
At this point, you would put some wood shavings soaked in water on the embers and instead, with the tablet, there is no need to create smoke. The tablet is an excellent smoker!
Cook the ribs for at least 30 minutes over direct heat. They should be enough to make the tablet smoke. In any case, always keep the tablet under control. There may be sudden flames if you have put too many embers.
Now there is only a little sauce left and we are on horseback! As soon as the bar starts to smoke, move it to the indirect heat cooking zone and continue cooking for 90 minutes. The lid of the barbecue must be strictly closed!
Another 30 minutes of cooking, during which you will have to brush the ribs with the barbecue sauce.
Barbecue recipes: how to prepare smoked beef ribs with bbq sauce The total cooking time of the ribs is 2 hours and 30. In summary: 30 minutes direct cooking, buy the smoke, switch to indirect cooking for 90 minutes and then 30 final to apply the barbecue sauce.
The flavor of the layers of smoke and sauce is something unique, the real pride of any barbecue enthusiast.
Do the usual test to see if the cutlets are cooked: try to pull the bone and if it comes off, they are ready.
The latest tips
Be careful not to overcook these beef ribs. They are not pork and therefore need less time to cook.
Do not underestimate plank’s quality. Use natural and robust materials: it must remain more than two hours in the barbecue.
For the rest, tell us how your “smoked” ribs with BBQ sauce turned out and if this technique was helpful to you. It is a valid method for cooking as if you had a “homemade” smoker, fast, efficient and tasty!
Let’s uncork a spicy, tannic and sumptuous red wine like Lagrein from the Teutsch winery. If you want to combine a more luxurious, enveloping and spicy red wine, uncork an excellent Amarone della Valpolicella.
If you want to combine a cocktail, the bitter and tangy taste of Negroni is absolutely perfect for the smoky sweetness of the ribs!
