There’s nothing like good barbecue and these beef ribs are great for any grill. In fact, I’m going to show you how to smoke these Country Style ribs on a gas grill. There’s really nothing to it. In fact, in my opinion, it’s even easier than using a traditional smoker with virtually the exact same results. Don’t believe me? Then check this out.
Smoked Country Style Boneless Beef Ribs Ingredients:
Country Style Boneless Beef Ribs Ingredients:
3 lbs Boneless Beef Ribs 1 cup Beef Broth Kosher Salt and Pepper to taste
Grill and smoke the Country Style Boneless Beef Ribs over indirect heat at 225° Fahrenheit for 3 hours. Switch the meat around on the grill, spritz with Beef Broth and and probe one meat portion with a thermometer. When internal temp reaches 160° F, wrap with foil and add 1/4 cup of Beef Broth. Cook again over indirect heat until the internal temp reaches 205° Fahrenheit, then remove from the grill. Wait 10 minutes to cut, shred and serve.
One of my all time favorite recipes is pulled pork and my go to recipe is normally Kalua Pork but if you’ve ever had a Smoked Boston Butt Roast, you know it’s amazing. I’ve got a really great rub to share with you and, for those that don’t have a smoker, I’m going to teach you how to smoke your butt’s on a gas grill and still get the same results.
What is a Boston Butt
Some people confuse and automatically assume that a Boston Butt Roast is exactly what it sounds like, the butt or bottom muscle of the pig, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s actually the front shoulder above another famous roast portion, the picnic. So, the difference is, the Butt roast is more square and has the shoulder blade bone cut into each portion and the picnic is more like the bicep and forearm(ham hocks) of the front legs. Both cuts of meat, however, make excellent pulled pork.
Apparently, butts are named after the barrels the pork was stored in during the revolutionary war in New England. The barrels themselves were indeed called butts. New England is comprised of six states in the northeastern united states and Boston Massachusetts is considered it’s largest city, Hence, the Boston Butt.
Seasoning a Pork Butt
There are many different ways to prepare a Smoked Boston Butt and no one recipe is the right way. When I think of pork roasts, though, I tend to lean towards my Latin taste buds which pull me towards a spicier more flavorful seasoning. Sure you could go with a classic salt and pepper rub and you would, most likely, get fantastic results. Me, on the other hand, prefer Barbacoa and Chipotle style recipes so, I put together a rub with a little more flare. I use yellow mustard as a binder and several sweet and savory ingredients for color and flavor.
You also have to consider whether or not you want to add any Barbecue Sauce. If you do want to add it, it’s best brush a thin layer over the roast at the time of wrapping in foil. It’s also fairly common unwrap the butt, when it’s done cooking, and glaze it with a thinner sauce. Common glaze’s are generally a mix of barbecue sauce, apple juice, apple cider vinegar and sometimes blended fruits like apricots or peaches. Once a glaze is applied, the Boston Butt Roast is placed back on the grill, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes to caramelize.
Smoking on a gas grill
Thanks to cooking shows on TV and cooking channels, like mine, on YouTube, Barbecue and smoked meats have gained extraordinary popularity. I think that most folks already love a good BBQ but, I’m not really sure that everyone has ever really experienced great barbecue. It was years before I ever really appreciated it. Any meat that came out of my Mom’s kitchen was never grilled and it always chewed like leather or an old shoe. Sadly, other than fish, I had no idea that meat could melt into your mouth until I was literally a full grown man and slow and low is the way to go.
On a gas grill, unless someone is burning the food, there isn’t the luxury of smoke. Without the added flavors, that burning logs, chips, pellets and nitrates the smoke provides, you’re not going to get that infamous “smoke ring” grill masters brag about. The smoke, however, on a gas grill, can still be achieved and I show you how to do it in this video tutorial. What I don’t mention, though, is an alternative.
First know, to achieve smoke, all you have to do is introduce and burn wood chips or pellets inside the barbecue grill itself. I purchased a cheap Smoker Tube from amazon that, very easily, fills with pellets and accomplishes this task. You can, however just wrap wood chips or smoking pellets in a hand made aluminum foil pouch and, with many poked holes in the foil, get the same if not similar results.
The Boston Pork Butt must cook over indirect heat. This means that there mustn’t be a gas burner directly under the meat. My grill, for example has 3 burners. I turn the front one on low and leave the back two off to place the butt over indirect heat. I also add a bowl of water, to regulate humidity and help to keep the roast from drying out. Another step you can take is spritzing the roast, once every hour, with apple juice or apple cider vinegar or a mix of the two in a spray bottle.
I try to maintain a temperature around 275° F on my lowest setting but, on hotter days, sometimes the grill will heat up as high as 325° F so, don’t freak out if yours does. The look of the outside and the actual internal temp of the pork butt is what really matters.
The smoker tube, on average, lasts 2 to 3 hours before more wood chips or pellets need to be added. I only add them once. When the tube burns out the second time, there’s no need for further smoke.
I probe the center of the roast with a thermometer after 4 hours. Once I’ve reached 160° F internal temp, I wrap the Boston Butt in foil and roast until internal temperature reaches 195° F. Then I remove it from the grill and let it rest 20 to 30 minutes before I shred it.
If I wrapped the the butt properly, there won’t be any leakage and there will be a puddle of roast juice in the bottom of the foil when I unwrap it. This juice or Au Jus, if you will, is essential for the pulled pork to reach maximum flavor and it provides a ton of moisture in the meat that keeps it from drying out so, don’t throw it out. If you want to chill it first to remove the heat, that’s fine but poor the whole thing over the shredded pulled pork and turn the pieces over a few times before serving.
If you’re interested in making pulled pork sandwich’s with this recipe, check out my Coleslaw recipe.
Smoked Boston Pork Butt Ingredients:
7.5 lb Boston Pork Butt 3 tbsp Yellow Mustard
Pork But Rub
1/2 cup Smoked Paprika 3 tbsp Kosher Salt 2 tbsp Black Pepper 2 tbsp Brown Sugar 2 tbsp Cumin 1 tbsp Coffee grains 1 tsp Garlic Powder 1 tsp Onion Powder
Apple Cider Vinegar to Spritze
275° Fahrenheit for approximately 8 hours, total cook time. Wrap in foil at 160°, approximately 4 to 5 hours and cook for an additional 3 hours or until internal temperature reaches 195° F, then remove from the grill and let it rest. After 20 minutes, shred into pulled pork, add the leftover juice from the roast and serve. For more flavor, shake the rub seasoning into the shredded pulled pork.
Most folks agree that you haven’t really had meat loaf until you’ve had it grilled. I originally wrote this recipe using an oven but a grill follows the same basic principles. Set you’re temp, keep the lid down and watch the clock and that’s basically all you have to do. My recipe, however, excludes ketchup. If you’ve got a problem with that, just top it with a Ketchup glaze at the end instead of my Hoisin Sauce and no one’s the wiser. I can promise you this, though, this recipe is tender, moist, flavorful, it will still stay on your fork and it makes the best leftover sandwich’s.
Meatloaf not Beef loaf
One of the things I learned, long ago, was to mix sausage with Beef in any recipe with a ton of ingredients and this recipe is no different. I mean, that’s one of the secrets to my Chili recipe and it is phenomenal. There is a 2 to 3 standard ratio that I use being 2 parts sausage to 3 parts beef and you’ll see that reflected in the ingredients. After all, we’re making Grilled Meatloaf, not beef loaf.
If you’ve ever tried my Chili recipe, you might notice that the ingredients are very similar to this recipe, too. I’ve simplified each recipe with the addition of taco seasoning but there are also a few other herbs and spices to fine tune it to the point to where they’re distinguished. Though, some things just shouldn’t change.
Raw or Cooked Onions
Technically, once the Grilled Meatloaf is cooked, the onions are cooked as well but they usually go into the meat mix raw. Barf! I don’t know what it is about raw onions, in this recipe, but I can’t stand them cooked that way in meatloaf or on pizza. This is crazy to say because I love onions. In fact I’m a huge fan but, for some reason, I just can’t stomach them in a meatloaf recipe. That’s why I recommend sauteing them first. It’s just a personal preference but I find that there is a much more enjoyable flavor and texture, doing it this way, too but whether you choose to do it this way will be up to you.
Mixing the Meatloaf Ingredients
There’s really nothing special you have to do to mix the ingredients correctly. Other than the sauteing of the chopped onion, that I’m recommending, all you have to do is mix everything together into one big mush, then shape into a loaf on a baking tray or sheet.
You may find that the meat mix is very wet and you might be tempted to add more bread crumbs but this is folly. In order to maintain moisture, the meat loaf must be like this. A dried out Meatloaf is just as bad as any dried out or over cooked Roasted Turkey!
How to Grill Meatloaf
Grilling Meatloaf really isn’t much different than baking it in the oven. You need to establish a 350° Fahrenheit temp, with the lid down, and cook over indirect heat. The other difference is, just rotating the pan half way through cooking and I demonstrate everything you need to know in the video tutorial.
Because I use a propane grill, it’s easy to focus my heat from 1 out of the 3 burners by turning the front burner on only, then cooking the meatloaf over indirect heat over the other two burners, not lit. The only thing I might recommend, if you’r using gas too, is adding some chips to the lit burner to get the smoke flavor affect going. That’s the only thing I wish I did differently in the video, just to add more smoke flavor. If you’re using charcoal or smoker anyway, you’re already set!
Grilling Meatloaf Ingredients:
1.5 lbs Hamburger 1 lbs Pork Sausage, breakfast 1 Onion, chopped and sauteed in Olive oil and salted 1 pkg Taco Seasoning, original (2 oz ) 1 tbsp Adobo Sauce, from Chipotle Peppers 1 15 oz can Diced Tomatoes 1 tbsp Cumin 1 tbsp Mexican Oregano 1 tsp Coriander 1 tbsp Worcestorshire Sauce 1 cup Bread Crumbs 2 Egg 2 tbsp Brown Sugar 5 Cloves Garlic, chopped
Hoisin Sauce for Glaze
Mix all of the ingredients together and shape the meat into a loaf in a cake pan. Grill or bake at 350° Fahrenheit, 45 minutes, add glaze and bake at 400° Fahrenheit for 15 more minutes. If you want to see how I make a Mushroom and Swiss with Leftover Meatloaf, CLICK HERE!