Agave brined ribs

I have been playing around a lot recently with country style ribs.  I have been pretty good about packing the flavor to these guys but have struggled to get them as tender as I like.

This time around I tried bring the ribs overnight.  I used a brine with 1 pint water, 1/2 cup agave nectar and 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.  They brined overnight.  The next day I dried them off and gave them a solid coating of dry rub as follows:
4 Tbls turbinado sugar
2 tsps chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning.

I cooked these ribs for two hours on my Weber kettle until they hit an internal temp around 170F.  I glazed them with some more agave nectar and went to town stuffing my belly!

Life is good these days.

Working on my country style ribs recipe

I have been having a blast recently trying to get better at cooking country style ribs.  I have a great time taking a subject and learning everything I can about it.  I have been smoking, grilling and cooking these guys in crock pots.

I don't have a perfect recipe yet but my ribs are consistently getting better.  I have a batch in a honey brine tonight that I want to put on my smoker in the morning.  If the weather forecast is right and we end up getting a few inches of rain I guess I will try them in the oven instead.

If you have a great recipe or technique for country style ribs I would love to hear from you.  Thanks for dropping by!

Some grilled chicken thighs

I did some reading about how folks do bbq competition style chicken thighs and decided to give something similar to it a try. 

Started by flipping the thigh over and removing the bone with some scissors. After the bone is out trim away any fat deposits, veins, and anything else that doesn't look tasty.

Now that the back of the thigh is completely opened up hit it pretty hard with a dry rub.  Let the rub work its way in for a while then flip it over and rub the skin side.  Here is a good list of recipes for dry rubs that you can make if you don't feel like buying a commercial rub.  If you want to use a commercial dry rub used by the pros then 3 Eyz, Simply Marvelous, Oakridge BBQ and Smokin Guns are all excellent choices.

I grilled these on the top rack of my Genesis 1000LX with the back burner off and the front two burners on medium.  Yeah, I know you can't use a gas grill at a competition.  I was just goofing off and having fun. 

After 40 minutes I started checking the internal temperature of the thighs and I pulled them off the grill at 170F.  Here is what they looked like right before I took them off.

These were really good and still plenty moist even though I didn't brine them.  I know that these are nothing close to true competition chicken thighs.  I didn't scrape the fat from the skin, I didn't use any smoke and I didn't sauce, glaze or inject.  I still had plenty of fun though!