Apple Smoked Pork Back Ribs and Pork Loin

Who doesn't love to barbecue?  Man's been barbecuing since he first learned how to make a flame.  Here's a little history of our American barbecue tradition from Wikipedia ...

The origins of American barbecue date back to colonial times, with the first recorded mention in 1610, and George Washington mentions attending a "barbicue" in Alexandria, VA in 1769. As the country expanded westwards along the Gulf of Mexico and north along the Mississippi River, barbecue went with it.

The core region for barbecue is the southeastern region of the United States, an area bordered on the west by Texas and Oklahoma, on the north by Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean. While barbecue is found outside of this region, the fourteen core barbecue states contain 70 of the top 100 barbecue restaurants, and most top barbecue restaurants outside the region have their roots there.

Barbecue in its current form grew up in the poor South, where both black and white cooks learned to slow roast tough cuts of meat over fire pits to make them tender. This slow cooking over smoke leaves a distinctive line of red just under the surface, where the myoglobin in the meat reacts with carbon monoxide from the smoke, and the smoky taste essential to barbecue.

These humble beginnings are still reflected in the many barbecue restaurants that are operated out of hole-in-the-wall locations, by individualists with shady reputations; the rib joint is the purest expression of this. Many of these will have irregular hours, and remain open only until all of a day's ribs are sold; they may shut down for a month at a time as the proprietor goes on vacation. Despite these unusual traits, rib joints will have a fiercely loyal clientèle.

The origins of barbecue tradition

The first ingredient in the barbecue tradition was the meat. Pigs came to the Americas with the Spanish explorers, and quickly turned feral. This provided the most widely used protein used in most barbecue, pork ribs, as well as the pork shoulder for pulled pork. The techniques used in barbecue are hot smoking and smoke cooking. Hot smoking is where the meat is cooked with a wood fire, over indirect heat, at temperatures between 120 and 180 F (49 and 82 C), and smoke cooking is cooking over indirect fire at higher temperatures. Unlike cold smoking, which preserves meat and takes days of exposure to the smoke, hot smoking and smoke cooking are cooking processes. While much faster than cold smoking, the cooking process still takes hours, as many as 18. The long, slow cooking process leaves the meat tender and juicy.

The next ingredient in barbecue is the wood. Since the wood smoke flavors the food, not just any wood will do; different woods impart different flavors, so availability of various woods for smoking influences the taste of the barbecue in different regions.

• Hard woods such as hickory, mesquite, pecan and the different varieties of oak impart a strong smoke flavor.
• Maple, alder, and fruit woods such as apple, pear, and cherry impart a milder, sweeter taste.

Stronger flavored woods are used for pork and beef, while the lighter flavored woods are used for fish and poultry. More exotic smoke generating ingredients can be found in some recipes; grapevine adds a sweet flavor, and sassafras, a major flavor in root beer adds its distinctive taste to the smoke.

The last, and in many cases optional, ingredient is the barbecue sauce. There are no constants, with sauces running the gamut from clear, peppered vinegars to thick, sweet, tomato and molasses sauces, from mild to painfully spicy. The sauce may be used as a marinade before cooking, applied during cooking, after cooking, or used as a table sauce. An alternate form of barbecue sauce is the dry rub, a mixture of salt and spices applied to the meat before cooking.

Today I am smoking pork back ribs and pork loin with a dry rub. 

First the ingredients...



1 pork loin
1 full rack of pork back ribs
Bad Byron's Butt Rub
Smoking Brothers Butt the Kitchen Sink Rub
olive oil

first remove the membrane from the back of the rib rack, if you've never done this before you just get your knife under it and get it started and then pull it off...



then trim the fat and silver skin from the pork loin...




here's how it looks when you're done...




give both a good slathering with a good olive oil...




then apply your rubs, in this case I am using both Bad Byron's Butt Rub and
Smoking Brothers Butt the Kitchen Sink Rub on each...



this is my secret weapon, my Traeger Wood Pellet Grill, courtesy of my good friend Terrible Tim the Grillmaster who taught me everything I know about smoking meats to absolute perfection, I'm smoking today over Apple pellets, the ribs will smoke for 3 hours on Medium and then the loin will go on for 1/2 hr on high then another 1/2 hr on medium...



here is the hopper which feeds the pellets...




on goes the ribs...




after smoking on medium for 3 hours (turned after an hour and a half) the ribs come off the grill and are wrapped in foil, amply splashed with apple juice, sealed up and returned to the grill along with the pork loin for another hour...



30 min on high, turn the loin, then 30 min on medium...




the finished pork loin...



let it rest for a few minutes and then slice, look at the juices, who says pork has to be dry...




the ribs aren't bad either...



fall off the bone tender...




served with Terrible Tim's Smokin' Good Baked Beans and Rivet's OMG roasted potatoes...



Cheers,
Andy

I am trying to get Terrible Tim to join up here and I think he will.  He reviewed this thread and told me that 1/2 cup of Welch's grape juice mixed with 1/2 cup apple juice, instead of the 1 cup of apple juice that I used, as a splash for the ribs is even better.  As I have learned most everything I know about the art of smoking meat from him so I'll definitely give that a go next time.

Cheers,
Andy