Pork Country Style Rib Burnt Ends

Burnt ends are one of the most amazing types of bbq food you will ever try. Usually made from the point of a brisket they are crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside and bursting with flavor from the rub and sauce applied to them. If you don’t have time to cook a brisket I have found that you can make burnt ends using pork country style ribs that taste almost as good as the real thing and require far less time.

The original form of burnt ends are made from brisket, I have heard many terms to describe burnt ends made from other cuts of meat. Poor mans burnt ends, Meat candy, and pork candy as well. No matter the name they go by they are delicious. Some other options for poor mans burnt ends for cuts of meat are pork shoulder, pork butt, pork belly, and chuck roast. I’m sure there are even more options than that but those are the ones I mornally hear talked about. I am sure I will do some posts on some of them at some point, but for now lets dive in to pork rib burnt ends.

Cooking Basics

The prep work for this recipe is amazingly simple. We will want to apply a binder to our ribs and then coat in yrou favorite bbq rub. I use oil for this recipe as a binder but feel free to use your favorite. I hear of people using yellow mustard or siracha. The flavor of the binder does not come through in the finished product so dont worry about that. For the rub I usually prefer Meat Church Honey Hog for this recipe because it is a little sweeter, but feel free to try your favorite.

Once this is done we are ready to cook. You will want to set your grill or smoker to 225 and cook with indirect heat. You will throw the ribs on and allow them to slowly come up in temperature. These will cook this way until they reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees or so. This will normally take 3 or 4 hours give or take a little depending on the size and thickness of the ribs you bought.

Once they reach the intermal temp we are looking for it is time to take them off the smoker and get them ready for the final cooking stage. At this point we will be cutting them up into inch by inch cubes and putting them into an aluminum foil tray. Once we have them in there we will apply another coating of yoru rub to make sure we get all the sides. Once this is done you will want ot add yrou favorite bbq sauce and mix it all up.

You will now seal the tray with aluminum foil and throw them back on the smoker for another hour or so. At that point they should be to the tenderness you are looking for and an internal temperature of about 185. You will want to remove the aluminum foil at this point and let them cook for another half hour. This will give the sauce a chance to thicken up on the burnt ends before you take them off. At that point you can take them off the smoker and dig in.

Final Thoughts

• There are a lot of things you can do with burnt ends once you have them. We usually just eat them by themselves becuase they are that good but you cna make sandwiches with them, we have also tried making twice baked potatoes and using them as part of the filling. Recently we actually chopped up the burnt ends into smaller pieces and used them on nachos for an appetizer as well. The possibilities are endless. If you come up with any new ways to make use of them please leave me a comment and let me know what you did.
• There are different options for cooking these that you can try out and find your favorite method for. If you really like the crunchy bark you can cut up the ribs into cubes before smoking at all and then cook. This will give you bark all the way around each cube. When I cook them I usually just cut each rib in half to make it easier to fit them where I need them on the smoker and cube them up when they go into aluminum foil. Some people dont seal in an aluminum pan when they cook these choosing to try to get as much bark as possible. I like to seal them in the tray for part of the cook becuase it braises the meat and makes it more tender but it will also take away some of the crispy bark so I encourage you to experiment and see which method you enjoy the most.

Recipe