Impress guests at your next cookout with this delicious smoked pork rib recipe starring a sweet and savory maple syrup-based glaze.
These smoked, maple glazed ribs might just be the most delicious, lip smacking pork ribs recipe you’ve ever tasted! The secret is that you’ll use the Texas Crutch, which is wrapping the meat in foil late in the cook, and then take the juices from the foil, some apple juice, and real maple syrup to make a sweet, sticky sauce with an impressive sheen.
Warning: Don’t compete with these ribs!
Several readers have written to tell me that they’ve won their local rib-off with this smoked BBQ pork ribs recipe but do not use this recipe for a Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) or Memphis Barbecue Network (MBN) competition. The judges there usually only give awards to classic red sauces like my Kansas City Classic. But serve them to friends and neighbors and they will worship you!
Hungry for more ribs recipes, tips, and techniques? Click here to download our ebook “Amazing Ribs Made Easy” $3.99 on Amazon (free Kindle app runs on all computers and devices). Or, get this book and others FREE as a member of the AmazingRibs.com Pitmaster Club. Click here to join.
Maple Glazed Ribs Recipe
Makes:
Takes:
Ingredients
- 1 slab ribs
- 4 tablespoons Meathead's Memphis Dust
- 1 cup apple juice, to be divided
- Morton Coarse Kosher Salt (approximately 1/4 teaspoon per pound of ribs plus some for the glaze)
- 2 teaspoons hot sauce
- 1/4 cup real maple syrup
These recipes were created in US Customary measurements and the conversion to metric is being done by calculations. They should be accurate, but it is possible there could be an error. If you find one, please let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page
Method
- Prep. Rinse the ribs in cool water to remove any bone bits from the butchering.
- Remove the leathery membrane from the back of the ribs and trim off any excess fat on both sides. Click here for an extensive tutorial on how to skin 'n' trim ribs.
- Season. Wet your hands and pat the the meat so the surface is damp and then sprinkle on the salt. If you can do this the night before, please do. Otherwise anytime prior to cooking will do. Then sprinkle with Meathead's Memphis Dust, enough to coat the surface, and massage it in.
- Fire up. Heat up your smoker or set up a grill for 2-zone cooking. Bring the cooker temperature to 225°F (107.2°C).
- Cook. Place the seasoned ribs on the smoker or grill, add the cover, and allow them to cook for 2 hours.
- Crutch. Next, pull off two sheets of 18" (457.2 mm) wide heavy duty aluminum foil, about 2' (610 mm) long and place them on top of each other. Place the slab in the center, bone side down, pull up the sides so you have a boat, and drizzle 1/2 cup (118.3 ml) of the apple juice over the meat, wetting the surface. Then wrap the slab tightly in two layers of foil. This is called the Texas Crutch. Cook in the foil for 1 hour at 225°F (107.2°C).
- Firm. Take the meat out of the foil while carefully reserving the liquid that has collected and put the ribs back on at the 225°F (107.2°C) smoker or grill for another 2 hours to firm up the crust.
- Make the sauce. While the ribs are back on the smoker or grill, pour the apple juice from the foil, now enriched with the flavors of the rub, into a sauce pan. Add the remaining half cup (118.3 ml) of apple juice. Boil it until about 1/3 cup (78.1 ml) remains. Add the maple syrup and heat over medium high and watch it very closely. It will bubble gently away for a bit and then at a certain temperature the sugars will go nuts and the glaze will foam aggressively. Watch it as attentively as a hungry teenager. As soon as it foams up, immediately turn down the heat and remove the pan from the flame until it stops frothing. You don't want it foaming for long or it could turn to hard candy. That would be bad.
- Finish the sauce. Add the salt and hot sauce and stir. It may bubble furiously again.
- Paint the ribs with a coat of the sauce and put it back into the cooker til the glaze sets a bit, perhaps 3 minutes. Add one more coat. Don't use too much.
- Serve. Slice the ribs and serve immediately.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators