How To Cook Amazing Ribs without Smoke or Fire! (2)
Transcript
00:00 (air whooshing)
00:02 (upbeat music)
00:05 While in Seattle recently,
00:08 I visited Chef Step's kitchen laboratory
00:10 where co-founder Grant Crilly showed me
00:12 how to make smoky, delicious ribs
00:13 using tools that are available to any apartment dweller.
00:16 No smoker or open flame is required.
00:18 The secret is in the rub, but it isn't all about spices.
00:22 In addition to a fairly traditional complement of spices,
00:24 including caraway, paprika, black salt, mustard seed,
00:27 celery seed, mace, and peppercorns,
00:29 Grant dries a mixture of onions and garlic
00:32 in a 375 degree oven for a couple of hours
00:35 until the vegetables are brown and crispy crunchy,
00:37 but not burnt.
00:39 Then combines the dried vegetables with the spices
00:41 using a tool I was very familiar with.
00:44 Okay, so we've got our spices.
00:45 This looks super familiar to me.
00:46 - Yep.
00:48 These are in grocery stores all over the place
00:50 in the bulk coffee aisle.
00:51 Again, you can use a little spice grinder,
00:54 a blender, whatever,
00:55 but we're very particular about the size we want.
00:57 We want a nice coarse grind.
00:59 And since these are nice big burr grinders,
01:01 you can dump all your spices in, salts,
01:04 all this stuff, and just comes out beautifully.
01:06 - And do you worry with a grinder this big
01:08 that you can't see what's going on inside?
01:09 Do you worry about getting whatever the last spice
01:11 was in here in your next dish?
01:13 - What we'll actually do is dump like a cup
01:14 of kosher salt through.
01:16 Kind of like scrubs up the burrs and comes out real nice.
01:19 The one thing that I learned is
01:21 never stick juniper berries in here.
01:22 - Oh, too moist?
01:24 - They're like resinous, so sticky.
01:26 - Oh.
01:27 - That was a disaster.
01:28 - That seems bad.
01:29 - I mean, this looks like a good excuse
01:30 to upgrade your coffee grinder to me.
01:32 - I think it is, and I don't know if I would buy a new one,
01:35 but I got this guy at an auction.
01:36 They're surprisingly common.
01:38 I think I paid 250 bucks for it.
01:39 Which even like the little barrazos are--
01:40 - It's cheaper than a barrazo, yeah.
01:42 - And you just chuck it in and the settings are great
01:44 and out comes like beautiful spices or beautiful coffee.
01:46 - It's rad, I can't wait to see how this goes.
01:48 - Yeah, I love it.
01:49 So here's all our nice roasted veggies.
01:53 - Yeah.
01:55 - I want to make sure it's actually going to get
01:57 in the grinder.
01:58 (bag crinkling)
02:00 - Love that smell.
02:03 - That smell, there's a much more smoky smell here
02:06 than I would have expected, given what you've told me so far.
02:09 - And as soon as you grind it up,
02:11 it kind of opens up all the little insides and pores.
02:13 It starts to smell real fresh.
02:16 - Is there still some oil in there
02:17 or is it just the dry ingredients at this point?
02:18 - Very little natural oils from the garlic and onion,
02:21 but they don't have a lot of oil.
02:23 - Okay.
02:23 - Yeah, it's just kind of little bits of essential oil.
02:26 (bag crinkling)
02:28 - That's a big bowl of spices.
02:30 - Big bowl of spices.
02:31 I don't know if this is a bowl to do it,
02:33 but let's see if we can, let's do fine.
02:36 Yeah, about that texture.
02:39 - So you're grinding this on the,
02:41 between fine and espresso according to the grind master.
02:43 - So it's pretty coarse.
02:45 - This would be about three hours of grinding
02:50 in a mortar and pestle.
02:51 - Oh my God.
02:52 Yeah, and then you end up with fines and coarse bit,
02:56 and this guy's just nice and consistent.
02:58 - Thanks, grind master.
03:03 - Right?
03:04 - That's amazing. - Yeah, I love it.
03:06 I just love it, yeah.
03:07 - Oh, wow. - Awesome.
03:09 - Super, yeah, okay.
03:13 - Yeah.
03:13 It's got the salt in there now.
03:16 - Salty, there's a little bit of smoke.
03:17 There's a little bit of heat on the end.
03:18 Then there's a different kind of salt there too.
03:21 It's hitting me just at the finish.
03:22 - Oh my God, I love it.
03:23 - That's super cool.
03:24 - So this is, like you said, this is five or 10 batches
03:27 of ribs easy. - Yeah.
03:28 - Is there marinade in the ribs or no?
03:30 - I don't put anything in the ribs.
03:32 Sometimes for the ribs when we're cooking them sous vide,
03:35 and it actually helps hold on to moisture,
03:38 we just sprinkle it with a little bit of salt.
03:39 - Okay.
03:40 - Too much salt can really dry them out,
03:42 and it usually ends up being about a half a percent
03:44 if you really want to get serious and weigh them.
03:45 - Okay.
03:46 - And that half a percent salt really helps the meat
03:48 hold on to some of that moisture.
03:49 It's kind of like why you have salt in a hot dog,
03:51 helps it stay emulsified and snappy.
03:53 - So you don't end up with that bag full of liquid
03:55 with a piece of meat floating in it.
03:56 - Yeah, yeah.
03:57 You'll always have a little bit,
03:59 but we'll actually use that for this too, so.
04:02 Yeah, so we've got--
04:02 - You just use a Ziploc, nothing fancy here.
04:04 - Yeah, you can use, we have a vacuum machine,
04:06 and when we do real long cooks, we'll use a vacuum machine,
04:09 but for this recipe, it's just not necessary.
04:12 - It's a little, I mean, I find that the vacuum machine,
04:16 it's a little less risky on the water leaking into the meat.
04:19 - Oh yeah.
04:20 - Assuming you set it up right.
04:21 - Yep.
04:22 - And you do good seals and all that stuff.
04:22 - Yeah, and even if you don't want Ziploc,
04:24 you can buy those nice bags, the nice vacuum machine bags,
04:30 and you don't have to seal them, you know?
04:32 Or you use, get the FoodSaver,
04:33 and you use the FoodSaver bags.
04:34 - And the temperatures you're doing
04:36 with an emergent circulator,
04:36 you don't worry about leaching stuff
04:38 out of the plastic into the food.
04:39 It's something people always ask about.
04:40 - Right, yeah, yeah.
04:41 Most of the temperatures we're cooking meat at,
04:44 any of that stuff, it's not an issue.
04:46 There's actually a new article that came out,
04:48 Dave Arnold was part of,
04:49 actually came out maybe eight months ago or something,
04:51 where he worked with Ziploc,
04:52 and they were starting to do tests
04:53 where they weren't having any leaching
04:55 even at boiling temperatures.
04:56 - Okay, that's good.
04:57 So it means you can do veggies and the whole thing.
04:58 - Yep, yep.
04:58 - Cool.
04:59 - So here's the next phase to this.
05:01 We've got our ribs, they're super juicy, beautiful.
05:04 I know they--
05:05 - Pretty tender there.
05:06 - They are tender, but they have a nice snap.
05:08 I know they still have that sous vide look to them
05:10 right now, which is kind of boring.
05:11 - A little sad gray.
05:12 - A little sad gray, yeah.
05:13 - Not what you want.
05:14 - Yeah.
05:15 - But we're gonna fix that.
05:16 - Yeah.
05:17 - So what are you rubbing on here?
05:17 - So this is molasses.
05:19 We thin it down.
05:21 You can add a little bit of water,
05:22 a little vinegar if you want.
05:23 And if you want, you add a little bit of liquid smoke.
05:26 If you really want it smoky,
05:28 we usually get pretty mild.
05:30 So we just brush this on so we have
05:32 that sweet molasses acidity,
05:35 and then it really helps the rub stick to it.
05:37 - And for Memphis ribs, you want a little bit of sweet
05:39 and you want a little bit of acid.
05:40 - Yeah, yeah.
05:41 So we just kind of go crazy on the rub.
05:44 - And this is what's gonna make our crust
05:47 when we chuck them in the oven.
05:48 - Yep.
05:49 - So when you're developing a recipe like this,
05:51 what's your process like?
05:52 How do you, where do you start with something like this?
05:55 - Well, for this one,
05:57 we had a pretty clear problem to solve.
05:59 I really wanted nice bark.
06:01 I really wanted nice crunch and nice smoke on the ribs.
06:05 And you have these simple parameters for us,
06:07 which is I don't have a smoker,
06:08 I don't have a grill.
06:09 How can I get those nice flavors in an oven?
06:11 What are the tools I have in an apartment?
06:13 So for us, we're, you know,
06:14 let's take some vegetables, let's burn 'em.
06:17 - How can we make smoke?
06:18 - How can we make smoke with a home oven
06:20 and turn it into actually like a rub
06:22 or a liquid or something?
06:23 And for us, we just ended up settling on the vegetables.
06:26 In the first couple trials, for sure,
06:27 we had, we overcooked 'em and they were black
06:30 and they're just way too bitter.
06:32 And through that experience, we're like,
06:33 let's tone it down.
06:34 So we do the mellow cook over the night is the easiest one.
06:36 You don't have to worry about burning them.
06:38 Toast 'em just a little bit more.
06:40 And from there, you know,
06:42 we started putting the rub on
06:43 with the vegetables and the spices.
06:45 Didn't have enough kind of smoke flavor for us
06:47 or enough sweetness.
06:48 So then we dig into the molasses.
06:50 Let's figure that one out.
06:51 And we wanted to stick a little more.
06:53 So then we added the rub, the molasses rub.
06:55 But it's a pretty simple problem solution stuff for us.
06:58 You know, we just kind of keep stacking those bricks of,
07:01 I want more smoke, I want more flavor.
07:02 I don't have this tool.
07:04 Those are actually really fun problems for us to solve too.
07:05 - A little bit of scientific method applied to food.
07:07 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:08 - Very cool.
07:09 - Yeah.
07:10 So we've got a rub on here
07:12 and the next step is just pop 'em in the oven.
07:14 So if you were gonna do a party,
07:16 you know, usually when you're doing ribs or something,
07:18 you're doing them for eight people or six people.
07:19 - Doing five racks.
07:20 - Yeah, you're doing five racks.
07:21 And at this point,
07:22 you can just let these hang out in your kitchen
07:25 and you can maybe put one or two racks in at a time
07:27 whenever people want 'em.
07:28 - Okay.
07:29 - You can put 'em all in if your oven was big enough.
07:30 But these can really hang out for a little bit.
07:32 You can actually put 'em back in the fridge
07:33 and do the full reheat in the oven if you want.
07:35 - And you're just gonna put 'em in a baking sheet, nothing?
07:37 - I'm just gonna leave 'em right here on this.
07:38 - Okay.
07:39 - This moisture will dry up
07:40 and this rub will get nice and dark and crusty.
07:42 - Cool.
07:44 - These are gonna go in the oven.
07:45 - And this is a commercial oven,
07:46 but this'll work in a normal oven.
07:48 - Yep, you can pop 'em in here.
07:49 This tray's too big for this guy,
07:50 but it doesn't matter, you can throw 'em in there.
07:53 Right now, this is a little bit fancier oven,
07:56 but it's not doing anything your home oven doesn't do.
07:58 Set it 400.
07:59 This has a little fan stirring the air and that's it.
08:02 So, I don't know, five, six minutes,
08:06 depends how dark you want them.
08:07 So you're gonna dry 'em out the outside
08:08 so it has that nice bark to it.
08:10 Yeah, we'll come back in a couple minutes.
08:11 - Okay, so Grant, one of the things
08:12 I always have a problem with when I do ribs
08:13 is getting the membrane off the back.
08:15 - Yeah.
08:16 - Is there a trick for this?
08:17 - I think so, I don't know if it's a trick,
08:20 but I'll show you how I do it.
08:22 So, this is the top of the ribs right here.
08:26 This is where the membrane is.
08:28 It's this little sheet right here,
08:30 this little piece of, it's not skin, it's just a membrane.
08:33 - And there's nothing wrong with eating,
08:35 it's just kind of unpleasant to eat.
08:36 - Yeah, it can get, especially if you do
08:38 traditional grilling or smoking,
08:40 it gets very papery and tough.
08:42 Less of a problem with sous vide
08:44 because that moisture really starts to break it down.
08:46 But you often have to do higher temperatures,
08:49 longer times for it to become real tender.
08:51 - Okay.
08:52 - So we just get rid of it.
08:53 - Sounds good.
08:54 - Yeah, in order to get rid of it,
08:55 it starts, you can start at this end or this end,
08:57 but I usually start at the small end
08:58 on something like baby backs.
09:00 And you just get a nice dry rag.
09:02 - Just get your thumb in there and peel it.
09:03 Oh, wow.
09:04 - Yeah, you just, it really helps to have a rag.
09:07 You don't need a knife, you don't need anything.
09:08 This is the old school chef way to do it.
09:10 - That is much easier than the way I've always done it.
09:12 Yeah.
09:13 - And if I can help it, all this good stuff,
09:16 this nice fat, I leave that.
09:18 - And you don't want to lose the little chunks of meat either.
09:20 That's amazing.
09:20 - Yeah, so it's nice and straightforward,
09:22 super tender ribs.
09:24 - And now they'll cut easier
09:25 and nothing to get in your way when you're eating.
09:26 - Yep, and yeah, the other thing about the membrane
09:28 that I don't like is you put a nice rub on it
09:29 and that membrane starts to peel or it's tough
09:31 and then you lose all the nice rubs
09:33 that you just made on it.
09:34 So this is great.
09:35 - Perfect.
09:35 - Yeah, really straightforward.
09:37 - These look great.
09:38 You've got a little bit of brown on the crust,
09:40 a little bit of top and bottom.
09:42 - Yep.
09:43 So the thing that you're going to see in the oven is,
09:46 so I know I'm not overcooking,
09:47 it just starts to pull away a little bit.
09:49 - Okay.
09:50 - That's the trick I look for.
09:51 If it starts to pull a little more than that,
09:52 and I go, okay, I'm overcooking it.
09:53 - And then what's your strategy for cutting these?
09:55 Just every other bone or?
09:58 - You know, you could do singles, you could do doubles,
10:00 you could serve a big guy like this,
10:01 but just so we can show people how to cut them.
10:03 These are trimmed here.
10:06 They slice off, this is a little shine bone,
10:08 and we just start slicing right into them.
10:10 - Oh man, those look good.
10:12 - Yeah, and because they're cooked sous vide,
10:15 they're just going to have
10:15 that really nice consistent texture we like,
10:18 that nice snap to them.
10:20 And they're just beautiful.
10:21 And I like the big thick pieces like that.
10:22 - Oh, that looks good.
10:23 - Still got some nice collagen in there.
10:25 Really beautiful.
10:26 - Grant, these look fabulous.
10:28 Can we go for a bite?
10:29 - Yes, please.
10:31 - Digging in here.
10:32 Cheers.
10:33 - A little hot.
10:35 - Oh man.
10:38 - Right?
10:39 - Never would have guessed you didn't put these
10:39 on the smoker overnight.
10:40 - Partly, man.
10:42 That's amazing.
10:42 - Oh my God.
10:45 Wow.
10:46 Okay, one more bite, then I'm going to ask you
10:47 some more questions.
10:47 Just pulling off the bone.
10:51 The meat's perfectly cooked.
10:53 There's a ton of flavor on the outside.
10:56 Meat's delightful.
10:58 And just like you said, crisp, tender.
11:02 - Right.
11:03 - Got a little bit of snap to it.
11:04 - Super strong.
11:05 - The outside is still,
11:07 it's like just a little bit dried out,
11:08 which is just perfect for that bark and that crust.
11:11 Yeah, I just, I love these.
11:12 I really love this recipe.
11:13 And when you make, you know,
11:14 you can make a day project out of making the spice
11:16 and you make the 10 times batch.
11:18 Whenever you want, you make your apartment ribs,
11:21 which is just super straightforward.
11:22 - Well, the neat thing about the rub is
11:24 I'm sure you can use it on other stuff too.
11:25 You can put it on your pork chops,
11:26 put it on your pork shoulder,
11:28 whatever it is you want to make.
11:28 - Yep.
11:29 Salmon.
11:30 - Grant, thank you so much.
11:32 If people want to know more about Chef Steps,
11:33 what's the best place to find you guys?
11:35 - The best place to find us is at chefsteps.com.
11:38 - And we'll have more from Chef Steps on Tested
11:41 later this week.
11:42 See you guys later.
11:42 [upbeat music]
11:45 (upbeat music)
11:47 [MUSIC]