- 2 hours ago
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.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My name is Karim El Ghayesh. I am the owner of KG BBQ in Austin and today I'm
00:07making our perfect version of the smoked pork ribs. KG BBQ is the perfect
00:14marriage of Egyptian street food and Texas barbecue. There's quite a few
00:18factors that make great pork rib. There's a really fine line between
00:22undercooking and overcooking. You want to have a nice little bend, a nice
00:26relaxation in the rack of pork, but you also don't want it to fall apart. The
00:29second component is the flavor. What makes our palm granite glazed pork
00:34ribs so unique is how familiar it looks when you go and eat it, but the flavors
00:39are way different. This is the rack of pork ribs. I like to look at two things. The
00:47marbling is number one. The marbling is the intramuscular fats that you see
00:51inside the fibers of the meat and that really just gives you an edge. You start
00:56with a product that is just gonna be more juicy than any other product. The
01:00second thing is the size and the thickness of the rack. I like to cook you
01:05know the thicker bigger racks they do tend to take a little bit longer time but
01:09they're more forgiving when you cook them. The first thing I'm gonna do is just
01:12open this up and get it trimmed. I want to start with my six inch boning knife. This is
01:17the most common knife that I use. I like to use a honing steel to kind of keep the
01:22blade aligned that makes it feel a lot sharper. I have a meat hand and a clean
01:27hand so I always handle all my spices my knife and everything with the meatless
01:32hand and that's how you kind of stay clean. The reason why we trim proteins is
01:37they're not necessarily shaped in the way that they would cook the most evenly. We
01:41just kind of want to trim off the excess parts and remove the breastbone. One of
01:46my favorite butcher terms is that you want to make the ribs knifable. Knifable means
01:51that you can cut through it with a knife. There's a lot of super thin edges here
01:55I just want to come in and square it off. I do the same thing when I'm smoking racks
02:00of lamb as well. Let's talk about the membrane here. If your rack is undercooked
02:04the membrane will be tough and it's not gonna be a pleasant bite or chew. But if
02:09your rack is overcooked the membrane in fact helps keep it together. But if you cook it
02:14perfectly you're not gonna worry about it. I'm going to remove the membrane and just
02:17show you how to do it. You want to get a paper towel. So I'm going to come in with this.
02:21Now this rack is ready to season.
02:23You need two components to make your rack of pork ribs. Number one is the rub. Two is
02:32the sauce. Now we're going to make our spice rub. We're going to start by combining our
02:36ingredients. You want to use kosher salt and you want to use pre-ground coarse black pepper.
02:42The reason why we use coarse spices is to create the crispy bark. If you use finer spices the salt
02:48will start to pull out the moisture and dissolve all the spices and it's going to have a more of a
02:53shiny glossy finish. It's not going to have this rigid texture to it. Granulated garlic. This SPG,
03:00salt pepper garlic, very common in the barbecue world. To make my rub a little bit more unique I
03:05like to add a little bit of Greek oregano. I like to use the more coarse grind on the oregano. For the
03:11unique ingredients that go and make this pork ribs more of a staple and this is really what
03:18surprises people. We add ground coriander. Coriander is a very common spice in Egyptian cuisine. Last
03:25but not least is ground sumac. Sumac is a dried berry native to the Middle East. We have sumac here
03:31in Texas but I don't advise that you eat it because sometimes it's poisonous. I learned that recently.
03:35This will add a little bit of tanginess and a little bit of sour zestiness to the rack of pork ribs,
03:41which is super unique. You don't really see that. Every pork rib that you get in Texas or in the
03:46barbecue world is very much on the sweet forward. We're going to go in and mix this spice rub which
03:52I highly recommend to let the rack sit in the rub for a little bit. And the nice thing about letting
03:58it sit in the rub is that you're pulling out the moisture surface and that is evaporating and
04:02you're going to have a drier surface which means a crispier bark.
04:09I will make the pomegranate barbecue sauce. Another main reason why our ribs are special. I love the
04:16kind of messy rib. It's like you don't really eat a good rib if you're not licking your fingers after
04:21that. Here in Central Texas we do a ketchup based sauce which is my preferred style as well. So we're going to
04:27start with a base of ketchup. To that we're going to add pomegranate juice. It's an antioxidant. I love
04:32drinking it at home with sparkling water. I love putting in cocktails. It has this beautiful tartness
04:38to it. We have kosher salt. We have granulated onion, granulated garlic, also more sumac. We have cumin
04:46and cinnamon. Now for a little bit of heat we're going to add a little bit of sriracha. Now we're going to add
04:51Worcestershire sauce. I hope I said it right this time. Dijon mustard, brown sugar, we got black pepper,
04:59we have apple cider vinegar. A lot of these ingredients you see in classic Texas style barbecue
05:05sauces. Last but not least is the pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate molasses is not just straight up
05:11sweet sugar. It does add sweetness but it gives you this nice balance of tangy as well. We're just
05:17going to mix it and let it kind of come up to a simmer. I really don't want to cook it that much.
05:22I just want all the ingredients to combine and come together. Simmer it for about five to ten minutes
05:28and it should be all done. When we're smoking barbecue we always like to use a binder
05:36or a slather. It's more commonly referred to as a slather here in Texas. It's pretty much an adhesive.
05:41You're adding a layer of a sauce or something that is moist to help your dry rub to stick.
05:49I do actually like to use sriracha. It adds a heat, adds flavor, adds color to the pork ribs
05:54which is more required when you're cooking pork compared to lamb or beef. You can just get away
06:00with salting a ribeye or salting a lamb chop but if you just salt a pork chop it's not going to be as
06:07good and that is why I chose to use a little bit of a more of a flavor in my slather. Now we're going
06:11to go in with the spice rub. I'm using one of these classic shakers. They're great for spice rubs. When
06:16you are seasoning with this shaker it's a lot more even than using your hand and as you pick it up you
06:22can see nothing falls down of it. It's really because of that slather because of the adhesive that we
06:27apply to it. Flip and repeat what we've done and it's all ready. I highly recommend that you let this sit
06:35for a few hours in your fridge. If you smoke something that is cold you allow for more time
06:41for bark development, for smoke absorption. Smoke in fact adheres better to surfaces that are cold.
06:51Now we're out here at the smoker trailer and before I put the pork ribs on the smoker I just want to
06:56make sure my fire is going well. So open here we use post oak. It's a blessing of central Texas. It's in
07:02high abundance. Kind of break down my fire and reset it. First of all you want to pick the right
07:07wood. It should be hardwood. It should be seasoned. That means it should have been cut and set for at
07:12least a year. So it's nice and dry and when you throw it in you want to see it burning. You want to
07:17see flames just like that. If you put in wood that is too green or too wet or not seasoned yet it's going
07:23to become extremely smoky. It's not going to combust. It's not going to burn. We're looking to smoke at about
07:28250 to 275. We do tend to cook on the higher end 275 more because we have one smoker at this point and
07:35we cook kind of everything on it and we open and close all the time so we try to keep it hot. This
07:40is a 1000 gallon propane tank that has been recycled and welded to another tank that is the firebox and
07:47over here we have the smokestack or the chimney and these are the main three components that you see
07:52in any smoker. We're gonna go ahead and open this door right here. We're gonna add our rack of pork
07:58ribs here on the top shelf. This rack is gonna go on the smoker for about three hours. The smoker is
08:03running at 275 right now. Pork ribs can be a little finicky to cook sometimes. The challenging thing
08:08about smoking a perfect rack of pork ribs is probably that fine line of knowing when to pull it when it's
08:15ready. If you pull it too early you're gonna have an unpleasant chewy bite that is tough and it's not
08:23tender. If you pull it too late it's gonna be too dry. It's gonna be too crumbly, too soft. All right,
08:28we'll see you later. All right, the main visual that you're looking for is the nice color because after
08:36you wrap you do not develop any more color. So I want to open the rack and I want to see this beautiful
08:42dark reddish mahogany color. I also don't want to see any bone pulling away. The bone pulling away on
08:50the rack of ribs means that it's getting close to be done. So that's a good sign here that I'm opening
08:54and getting to wrap before the rack is done. The main reason we wrap as well is because you want to
09:01steam it a little bit. You want to tenderize the rack. If you cook it all the way unwrapped a lot of times
09:05you end up drying it. So now we're gonna lay it right here on the spoil. Shiny side inside or outside
09:11doesn't matter. I was so curious at some point that I had to look it up. Wrap it nice and tightly
09:15and this is gonna go back to the smoker for about another hour, hour and a half until it gets tender.
09:21It's been about an hour so let's go and check on this. I'm gonna pick this rack up without really
09:25having to unwrap it or anything. There are ways you can know where it's at and that's really by
09:31the bend. So you guys can see it is bending a little bit more but I can feel that it's not too soft.
09:37So this is what you're looking for. If you go and pick up the rack and it feels too soft and it feels
09:41like it's breaking up that's unfortunately it's overcooked. If you go and pick it up and it feels so
09:47tense and firm that's undercooked. So you want to keep practicing until you get that right doneness.
09:52The right doneness is when you bite on the rib and it doesn't just slide all of it in your mouth.
09:58A lot of the fat is rendered and now it's kind of braising and steaming in it as well.
10:03And this rack is ready to glaze. We're gonna take it out of the foil, put it back on the smoker.
10:08With the sauce that we made earlier we like to put it in these you know fancy chef bottles here.
10:15You can have a brush or something on here but I like to glaze on the heavier side and just make
10:21sure everything is nice and coated. This sauce is a little bit thin in consistency by design to make
10:28it also work as a glaze. You can see how it looks like now a nice even layer not too thin not too
10:36thick of a layer of barbecue sauce. We're gonna let this cook for like 10 minutes at the most. Now it's
10:41gonna look a lot darker a lot more caramelized and this flavor is gonna pop when you cut the ribs and taste them.
10:50Now the pork ribs have been glazed for about 10 minutes or so. We pulled them and now they're
10:55resting in the hot box right here. This is a temperature humidity control device that keeps
10:59your meat hot. You can proof bread in this. There's a lot of beautiful uses. You can use this equipment.
11:05Let's see how this look like. We've cooked a few racks here today for service so they look beautiful.
11:12Nice glaze here. It's not too dry. I don't like to pull them when they are fully caramelized and already
11:19dry in the surface. I like to maintain a little bit of that kind of wet moisture on the surface.
11:24If you have this pull the meat is pulling away from the bone about you know half an inch or so.
11:29That's a very good indicator that your ribs are in a good place. We still see that bend. It's not
11:34cracking open. If it cracks open or breaks up it's definitely an overcooked rack. But these look great.
11:42We want to go in and pour the rest of that sauce over the rib. Let's go ahead and cut them. The tricky
11:48part with the rack of pork is that the bones will run different directions. If you flip the rack you
11:53have a lot more vision where the bones are running and it's a lot easier. I personally don't like to
11:58do that or you can do that in the beginning but eventually you want to cut when the rack is sitting
12:02up like that so that you're not ruining the presentation side of the rack. Your knife should go in
12:08really easily. If you're hitting a bone stop what you're doing and just go in a different angle.
12:13Nice pull from the bone. I can feel it's it's very tender but it's not falling apart. The moisture
12:20is not gushing out of it. It's not escaping too quickly. That means it's well rested. It's a beautiful
12:26cook. The part where you get to be creative and the part where you get to make art is how your food
12:32looks. I just love taking the time to make the food look beautiful and pretty and stunning so that when I
12:39cook a spread I want you know people to absorb the the visuals of it first before they even dive into
12:46the flavors and eat it. We're gonna now dust it with some za'atar. Za'atar is a Lebanese spice blend.
12:53It doesn't have salt in it. It gives you a nice earthy, herby flavor. It has sesame seeds so it gives
13:00a nice texture and a beautiful look to the rib as well. That's also one of the reasons why I like my
13:05rib to kind of have this moist surface so that the za'atar can stick on it and there's a little bit
13:11of the barbecue sauce that we made earlier for dipping. Add the sumac onions on the tray as well.
13:16Last but not least I like to sprinkle a few pound red seeds on top. I like to treat the people that
13:21order big trays with some nice little flags only at KG BBQ where Egypt meets Texas. I'm gonna give this a try.
13:30Mmm. Beautiful. It comes right out of the bone. It's not overcooked. It's not too dry. Nice thing.
13:40Cheers y'all. Come see me in Austin and get some Egyptian barbecue.
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