Steamed Restaurant Ribs

N.B. I am posting this here so as not to hijack the boiled/grilled hot dog thread.

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quote:

Originally posted by Dr of BBQ

quote:

Originally posted by MiamiDon
I believe that they are actually "steamed" before finishing them up on a grill or in a salamander. (a TR manager told me about the steaming part)

Same thing,if it ain't smoked it ain't BBQ.

Oh, I agree, in principle. I was actually having an argument with the guy. I met him with a group in a bar, or at a party or something. He insisted that the TR method was the only way to get tender ribs.

BTW, I too tried boiling them based on someone's recommendation, about 30 years ago, when I was learning to cook. I was not pleased with the result. I soon figured out that I was making pork stock, and then using the de-flavored meat!

Steaming certainly is better than boiling, but cannot match long-cook BBQing. There probably have been a couple of generations of city/town dwellers in many parts of the country that have been brought up to believe that Tony Roma's or Beefsteak Charlie's, etc, electric steamed/broiled ribs are what "ribs" are all about, though.

I don't even want to imagine what it's like in their kitchens. You know that they are not steaming them to order. There are probably trays of greyish steamed rib slabs sitting in a cooler, waiting to be sauced and finished in the salamander.

Interestingly, Chili's states that their ribs are smoked daily, and finished on the grill to order. The Chili's restaurants around here are in malls. Where the heck are they smoking hundreds of pounds of meat? In some cosmotronic smokeless smoker?

I don't know...and in Jersey our restaurants are "smoke free"!!!

I wonder if Chili's is doing what a neighbor of mine used to do. (and embaressingly, brag about.)

He rubbed the ribs down with a chipolte hot sauce (Buffalo Brand, I think) and just oven cooked in foil, then finished them off under the broiler with a sweet sauce.

He loved his "BBQed ribs". I have to put that in quotations, as they were not BBQed low and slow, smoked, or much of anything traditionally BBQ. They were fridge to plate in less than 90 min.

I have to give him credit though. The chipolte hot sauce rub gave a pretty decent smoke flavor for psedo-BBQ. If you aren't a true BBQ lover, it was pretty passable for the unenlightened.

Houston's Restaurants also steam their ribs for tenderness and convenience, then finish them off over hickory, hitting them with (KC Masterpiece?) BBQ sauce a couple minutes before serving.

Fall off the bone = overcooked ribs

DD

quote:

Originally posted by desertdog
Houston's Restaurants also steam their ribs for tenderness and convenience, then finish them off over hickory, hitting them with (KC Masterpiece?) BBQ sauce a couple minutes before serving.Fall off the bone = overcooked ribs DD

DD I couldn't agree more but that said, My customer ratio here in Springfield is about 8 to 1 in favor of fall off the bone.

Recently I had a customer from out of town that ordered ribs and as I served them and collected the money he announced he was a Kansas City BBQ Judge.All I could say was "Oh no your not going to like these ribs." And then I explained that my customers wanted/demanded fall apart ribs as in what a KC BBQ Judge would consider mushy. I also told him I'm also a certified KC BBQ Society Judge and embarrassed by the whole thing.

But I have a choice of selling lots of ribs everyday or doing a constant education / retraining of my customers and spending years working my way back up the ladder to a point of selling lots of ribs. Not much of a choice in my book.

Jack

Too bad you cannot offer a second menu item: Al Dente Ribs.