A take off of the "Brined butt vs dry rub"

[danbury]

sumosmoke posted a topic about brining/marnating pork butts. I wanted to try it but on a smaller scale so I bought some pork country style ribs and used the same recipe for the brine provided in her link. I let them marinade over night (about 14 hours in all), took them out and let them set for about a half hour or so to let some of the mixture drip off.

I wanted to take it one step further and instead of making a traditional bbq sauce that I always make, I wanted to go with a glaze. So I mixed up 1 12oz jar of smucker's brand orange marmalade, 5 or 6 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon of kosher salt, a little fresh ground black pepper and about a tablespoon of red pepper flakes.

The meat has been cooking for about 4 hours how (I usually cook these between 275 and 300). I just put the glaze on and they'll be ready to pull off as soon as they get a little "bark" on them. So far the sample bits have tasted pretty good. A little more hammy than I'd like, but over all it's different and not bad at all.

I'll add the last q-view to this when I pull them off, but here's what I got so far.

 

[pineywoods]

Interesting when you post the final pics tell us what you thought of each kind as well

 

[danbury]

All pictures are posted in original post.
All in all I would do this again in a heartbeat. I think in the glaze I will add some diced up jalapenos next time. The sweetness was right on the money and although I did put some red pepper flakes in it, I think it just needed a little more "kick" but from jalapenos instead of more red pepper flakes. The meat was very tender and I was really expecting an over all hammy taste but there was not. This was pretty close to some oriental style bbq-ed pork I've had in the past but with more of a smoky flavor. I use Royal Oak Lump and what ever flavoring woods are left from the last q as well as any additional I may add, in this case there as cherry wood, hickory from last time and I tossed in one chunk of pecan. I did not wrap in foil at any point during the cook. I'm getting away from doing that.

I'm a traditional bbq kind of person and don't stray too far from traditional bbq styles/ingredients. Sumosmoke's post inspired this idea and fortunately worked out on the country style ribs, which for a quick weekend bbq, adds to the list of things I usally do. It's doubtful I would ever brine/marinate an entire pork butt as I'm just too hooked on pulled pork the way I do it now and the idea of doing it another way doesn't interest me.

Being that there is so much sugar in the brine as well as the glaze, you do have to keep those temperatures down and wait till the last minute to put the glaze on or you will burn it. As it turned out, the finished color was just where I like it... dark and glossy but not burned. I would like to find an orange marmalade without corn syrup in it if one exists.

The last thing I might add is that this will gum up your grate so after pulling the meat I opened up my valves and let the temp come up to about 350 for about and hour to dry out that gummy stuff. It then scraped/brushed right off the grate with wire brush after that.

 

[DanMcG]

Interesting, I'll have to add this to the endless list I got now, Thanks Danbury

 

[ronp]

Great looking ribs.

 

[smoke_it_up]

that was some mighty tasty look q you had there so whitch is better traditional or the glazed? i knw u said you would try the glazed again but i'am just curious.

 

[danbury]

I'll take the traditional over the glazed any day, but for an occasional change I'll do this again. I'm always open for trying new things but when it comes down to it, traditional bbq is that old friend that you can always count on.

 

[sumosmoke]

Dan - great post! Thanks for the props, that was kind of you to mention it.

Now I have something to steal from you, this complete thread!! LOL .. have never tried country ribs and that glaze looks, and sounds, like it's a perfect concoction for my co-workers. I'm gonna definitely give this a go!

Awesome thread,

well deserved!!

 

[sumosmoke]

Quick question - to what temp, or time, did you cook the ribs? The initial thread mentioned you were at 4 hours @ 275-300. Did you put a probe into one to take them all to temp, or was this a "by time" smoke? Thanks!

 

[danbury]

Sumosmoke, when I cook things like ribs, country ribs or chicken I never use a probe thermometer. On what I refer to as "small things" like this, at some point I usually pick out one of the bigger pieces (or dark meat in the case of chicken) and try to pinch off a piece of meat. If it pretty much falls off, then it's done. I guess after 40 years of doing this it comes natural.
Now when it comes to bigger cuts of meat, chuck roasts, pork butts, turkey breasts and my stuffed meatloaf, I'll use two probe thermometers.

Time wise I think it was like 4 to 4.5 hours cooking time. I didn't have a whole lot of meat on that pit yesterday except for the small tray of beans and I don't open the top but maybe once an hour to flip things over.

I do want to thank you for planting the bug in my head with regards to this as it led to the idea of what I did.

**the temperatures on average were closer to the 300 mark with maybe 2 spikes of 325**