I like to trim my spare ribs down to what is called a St. Louis Style Rib. By cutting pork spare ribs down to St. Louis style you get a more uniform rack of ribs. St. Louis style ribs make cooking and serving them much easier. More St. Louis style ribs fit on the smoker and they are easier to tell when done.
St. Louis style ribs are prepared by removing the cartilage from the “top” of each rib rack. If you go to a BBQ restaurant and order “rib tips” this is where they’ve come from. Some meat processors sell these “rib tips” by the case. It can be an economical way to serve ribs to large groups.
When you trim lots of racks of ribs you end up with quite a few freezer bags full of trimmings. One of the most common questions asked on BBQ forums is “what do you do with your rib trimmings? There’s a lot of different techniques/recipes for rib trimmings. Here’s one of the ways we utilize rib trimmings at are house. (Click each picture to enlarge.)
Place all your rib trimmings in the crockpot.
Add a can of green enchilada sauce and cook until tender
Shred the pork. Make sure you discard all fat and cartilage
After straining the liquid and removing the fat reduce on the stove.
Reduce the liquid from the crockpot down to a thick "syrup" consistency.
Add the reduced liquid back to the shredded pork and mix well.
Take your uncooked tortillas and poke holes all over them.
Place your tortilla over a small bowl and bake at 400 degrees until brown
Now you've got a bowl. Fill it with the pork and all the fixings.
**I use Tortilla Land uncooked tortillas. These tortillas can be purchased at Costco and provide a great fresh tortilla that compliments your food.
***The rib tips were in the crock pot on low for about 8 hours. Make sure you get all the fat drained out of the meat. One great way of removing the fat is to cook the meat the day before and put the liquid in the refrigerator, after it cools. The fat will congeal on top and you can easily remove it.
[...] didn’t put the trimmings back on the smoker as I had other plans for them. I was inspired by a recent post by Larry over at The BBQ Grail where he actually had the nerve to use a crockpot to cook up some raw rib trimmings for taco [...]
Excellent idea. I will have to see if the have green enchilada sauce at the Latin American market, the grocery stores here only carry the red kind. What do the fork holes do for the tortilla?
Much like a pie crust, the uncooked tortillas will blow up like a balloon if you don’t poke the holes in them. I’m not quite sure why they don’t blow up if you pan fry them, but baked in the oven without the wholes gives you a tortilla pillow.
that is a great meal right there!