How Austin’s Best BBQ Ribs are Made | Made to Order | Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit joins Egyptian pitmaster Kareem El-Ghayesh at KG BBQ in Austin, Texas, to see how their BBQ Pork Ribs are made. KG BBQ is one of Austin’s most exciting BBQ joints, transforming Texas barbecue by blending it with the flavors of the Middle East.

00:00 Intro
00:41 Cleaning up the Ribs
02:24 Making the Rub
04:06 Making the Sauce
05:30 Applying Slather and Rub
06:49 Smoking the Ribs
10:48 Finishing the Ribs

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[upbeat music] – My name is Kareem El Ghayesh. I am the owner of KG Barbecue in Austin and today I’m making our perfect version of the smoked pork ribs. [upbeat music continues] KG Barbecue is the perfect
marriage of Egyptian street food and Texas barbecue. There’s quite a few factors
that make great pork rib. There’s a really fine line between undercook and overcooking. You want to have a nice little bend, a nicer relaxation in the rack of pork, but you also don’t want it to fall apart. The second component is the flavor. What makes our pomegranate
glazed pork ribs so unique is how familiar it looks
when you go and eat it, but the flavors are way different. [upbeat music] This is a rack of pork ribs.
I like to look at two things. The marbling is number one. Well the marbling is the
intramuscular fats that you see inside the fibers of the meat, and that really just gives you an edge. You start with a product that is just gonna be more
juicy than any other product. The second thing is the size
and the thickness of the rack. I like to cook, you know
the thicker, bigger racks. They do tend to take a
little bit longer time, but they’re more forgiving
when you cook them. The first thing I’m gonna
do is just open this up and get it trimmed. I wanna start with my
six inch boning knife. This is the most common knife that I use. I like to use a honing steel to kind of keep the blade aligned. It makes it feel a lot sharper. I have a meat hand and a clean hand, so I always
handle all my spices, my knife and everything with the meatless hand. And that’s how you kind of stay clean. The reason why we trim proteins is they’re not necessarily shaped in the way that they would cook the most evenly. We just kind of wanna
trim off the excess parts and remove the breast bone. One of my favorite butcher
terms is that you want to make the ribs knifeable, knifeable means that you can
cut through it with a knife. There’s a lot of super thin edges here. I just want to come in and square it off. I do the same thing when I’m
smoking racks of lamb as well. Let’s talk about the membrane here. If your rack is undercooked,
the membrane will be tough and it’s not be a pleasant bite or chew, but if your rack is overcooked, the membrane in fact
helps keep it together. But if you cook it perfectly, you’re not gonna worry about it. I’m going to remove the membrane and just show you how to do it. So you want to get a paper towel. So I’m gonna come in with this, now this rack is ready to season. [upbeat music] You need two components to make
the your rack of pork ribs. Number one is the rub, two is the sauce. Now we’re gonna make our spice rub. We’re gonna start by
combining our ingredients. You want to use kosher salt and you want to use pre-ground
coarse black pepper. The reason why we use coarse spices is to create the crispy bark. If you use finer spices,
the salt will start to pull out the moisture
and dissolve all the spices and it’s gonna have a more
of a shiny, glossy finish. It’s not gonna have this
rigid texture to it. Granulated garlic, this
SPG salt, pepper, garlic, very common in the barbecue world. To make my rub a little bit more unique, I like to add a little
bit of Greek oregano. I like to use the more
coarse grind on the oregano for the unique ingredients that go and make this pork ribs more of a staple and this is really what surprises people. We add ground coriander. Coriander is a very common
spice in Egyptian cuisine. Last but not least is ground sumac. Sumac is a dried berry
native to the middle East. We have sumac here in Texas, but I don’t advise that you eat it ’cause sometimes it’s poisonous. I learned that recently. This will add a little bit of tanginess and a little bit of sour zestiness
to the rack of pork ribs, which is super unique,
you don’t really see that. Every pork rib that you get in Texas or in the barbecue world is
very much on the sweet forward. We’re gonna go in and mix this spice rub, I highly recommend to let
the rack sit in the rub for a little bit. And the nice thing about
letting it sit in the rub is that you’re pulling out
the moisture surface and that is evaporating and you’re gonna have a drier surface, which means a crispier pork. [upbeat music] I’ll make the pomegranate barbecue sauce. Another main reason why
our ribs are special, I love the kind of messy rib. It’s like you don’t really eat a good rib if you are not licking
your fingers after that. Here in central Texas we
do a ketchup-based sauce, which is my preferred style as well. So we’re gonna start
with a base of ketchup. To that, we’re gonna
add pomegranate juice. It’s an antioxidant. I love drinking it at
home with sparkling water. I love putting it in cocktails. It has this beautiful tartness to it. We have kosher salt, we
have granulated onion, granulated garlic, also more sumac, we have cumin and cinnamon. Now for a little bit of heat we’re gonna add a little bit of sriracha. Now we’re gonna add
Worcestershireserser sauce, I hope I said it right this time, Dijon mustard, brown sugar. We got black pepper. We
have apple cider vinegar. A lot of these ingredients you see in classic Texas-style barbecue sauces. Last but not least is
the pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate molasses is not
just straight-up sweet sugar, it does add sweetness, but it gives you this nice
balance of tangy as well. We’re just gonna mix it and let it kind of come up to a simmer. I really don’t wanna cook it that much, I just want all the ingredients to combine and come together. Simmer it for about five to 10 minutes and it should be all done. [upbeat music] When we’re smoking barbecue, we always like to use
a binder or a slather. It’s more commonly referred
to as a slather here in Texas, it’s pretty much an adhesive. You’re adding a layer of a sauce or something that is moist to
help your dry rub to stick. I do actually like to use sriracha, adds a heat, adds flavor,
adds color to the pork ribs, which is more required
when you’re cooking pork compared to lamb or beef. You can just get away with salting ribeye or salting a lamb chop. But if you just salt a pork chop, it’s not gonna be as good. And that is why I chose to
use a little bit of a more of a flavor in my slather. Now we’re gonna go in with the spice rub. I’m using all these classic shakers. They’re great for spice rubs. When you are seasoning with this shaker, it’s a lot more even than using your hand. And as you pick it up, you can
see nothing falls down a bit. It’s really because of that slather, because of the adhesive
that we apply to it. Flip and repeat what we’ve
done, and it’s all ready. I highly recommend that you let this sit for a few hours in your fridge. If you smoke something that is
cold, you allow for more time for pork development,
for smoke absorption, smoke in fact adheres better
to surfaces that are cold. [upbeat music] Now we’re out here at the smoker trailer, and before I put the
pork ribs on the smoker, I just wanna make sure my fire
is going well, so open here, we use post oak, it’s a
blessing of central Texas. It’s in high abundance. Kind of break down my fire and reset it. First of all, you wanna
pick the right wood. It should be hard wood,
it should be seasoned. That means it should have been cut and set for at least a year. So it’s nice and dry. And when you throw it in,
you wanna see it burning. You wanna see flames just like that. If you put in wood that
is too green or too wet or not seasoned yet, it is
gonna become extremely smoky. It’s not gonna combust,
it’s not gonna burn. We’re looking to smoke
at about 250 to 275. We do tend to cook on
the higher end, 275 more, because we have one smoker at this point and we cook kind of everything on it and we open and close all the time. So we try to keep it hot. This is a 1,000 gallon propane
tank that has been recycled and welded to another tank. That is the fire box. And over here we have the
smoke stack or the chimney. And these are the main three components that you see in any smoker. We’re gonna go ahead and
open this door right here. We’re gonna add our rack of
pork ribs here on the top shelf. This rack is gonna go on the
smoker for about three hours. The smoker is running at 275 right now. Pork ribs can be a little
finicky to cook sometimes. The challenging thing about
smoking a perfect rack of pork ribs is probably the
that fine line of knowing when to pull it when it’s ready. If you pull it too early, you’re gonna have an unpleasant chewy bite that is tough and is not tender. If you pull it too late,
it’s gonna be too dry, it’s gonna be too crumbly, too soft. All right, we’ll see you later. All right, the main visual
that you’re looking for is the nice color because after you wrap you do
not develop any more color. So I wanna open the rack and I wanna see this
beautiful, dark, reddish, mahogany color. I also don’t wanna see
any bone pulling away. The bone pulling away on the rack of ribs means that it’s getting close to be done. So that’s a good sign
here that I’m opening and getting to wrap
before the rack is done. The main reason we wrap as well is because you wanna steam it a little bit, you want to tenderize the rack. If you cook it all the way unwrapped, a lot of times you end up drying it. So now we’re gonna lay it
right here on the spoil, shiny side, inside or
outside, doesn’t matter. I was so curious at some point
that I had to look it up, wrap it nice and tightly, and this is gonna go back to the smoker for about another hour, hour and a half until it gets tender. It’s been about an hour, so
let’s go and check on this. I’m gonna pick this rack up, without really having
to unwrap it or anything there is ways you can know
where it, where it’s at, and that’s really by the bend, so you guys can see it’s, it is bending a little bit more, but I can feel that it’s not too soft. So this is what you’re looking for, if you go and pick up the
rack and it feels too soft and it feels like it’s breaking up, that’s unfortunately, it’s overcooked. If you go and pick it
up and it feels so tense and firm, that’s undercooked. So you want to keep practicing until you get that right doneness. The right doneness is
when you bite on the rib and it doesn’t just slide
all of it in your mouth. A lot of the fat is rendered
and now it’s kind of brazing and steaming in it as well. And this rack is ready to glaze. We’re gonna take it outta the foil, put it back on the smoker with the sauce that we made earlier. We like to put it in these, you know, fancy chef bottles here. Now you can have a brush
or something on here, but I like to glaze on the heavier side and just make sure everything
is nice and coated. This sauce is a little bit thin and consistency by design to
make it also work as a glaze. You can see how it looks
like now, a nice even layer, not too thin, not too thick
of a layer of barbecue sauce. We’re gonna let this cook for
like 10 minutes at the most. Now it’s gonna look a lot
darker, a lot more caramelized, and this flavor is gonna pop when you cut the ribs and taste them. [upbeat music] Now the pork ribs have been glazed for about 10 minutes or so. We’ve pulled them and now they’re resting
in the hot box right here. This is a temperature,
humidity-controlled device that keeps your meats hot. You can proof bread in this. There’s a lot of beautiful uses
you can use this equipment. Let’s see how this look like. We’ve cooked a few racks
here today for service, so they look beautiful. Nice glaze here. It’s not too dry. I don’t like to pull them when
they are fully caramelized and already dry in the surface. I like to maintain a little bit of that kind of wet
moisture on the surface, if you have this pull, the meat is pulling away from
the bone about, you know, half an inch or so, that’s
a very good indicator that your ribs are in a good place. We still see that bend,
it’s not cracking open, if it cracks open or breaks up, it’s definitely an overcooked rack. But these look great. We want to go in and pour the rest of
that sauce over the rib. Let’s go ahead and cut them. The tricky part with the rack of pork is that the bones will
run different directions, if you flip the rack you
have a lot more vision where the bones are running
and it’s a lot easier. I personally don’t like to do that or you can do that in the beginning, but eventually you want to cut
when the rack is sitting up like that so that you’re not
ruining the presentation side of the rack. Your knife should go in really easily, if you are hitting a bone,
stop what you’re doing and just go in a different angle. Nice pull from the bone, I can feel it’s very tender
but it’s not falling apart. The moisture is not gushing out of it, it’s not escaping too quickly. That means it’s well rested,
it’s a beautiful cook, and the part where you get to be creative and the part where you get to make art is how your food looks. I just love taking the time to
make the food look beautiful and pretty and stunning so
that when I cook a spread that I want, you know, people
to absorb the visuals of it first before they even dive
into the flavors and eat it. We’re gonna now dust it with some za’tar. Za’tar is a Lebanese spice blend. It doesn’t have salt in it. It gives you a nice earthy, herby flavor. It has sesame seed so
it gives a nice texture and a beautiful look to the rib as well. And that’s also the one of
the reasons why I like my rib to kind of have this moist surface so that the za’tar can stick on it and is a little bit of the barbecue sauce that we made earlier for dipping. Add sumac onions on the tray as well. Last but not least, I like to sprinkle a few
pomegranate seeds on top. I like to treat the people
that order big trays with some nice little flags, only at KG Barbecue,
where Egypt meets Texas. I’m gonna give this a try. Hmm, beautiful, it comes
right outta the bone. It’s not overcooked, it’s
not too dry, nice tang. Cheers, y’all. Come see me in Austin and
get some Egyptian barbecue. [upbeat music]