smoked and ginger beer-steamed spare ribs with fresh turnip salad

smoked and ginger beer-steamed spare ribs with fresh turnip salad, originally uploaded by aarn! +21st October, 2009+.

tossed a medium-sized rack of spare ribs (lionette's market), which had been rubbed with salt and pepper, in the main chamber on the offset-smoker. stoked a two-tier fire, consisting of a layer of charcoal briquettes (fired about half-way in a chimney starter) topped with a layer of oak (tongue-and-groove wainscoting!! taken from vadim's backyard), in the fire-box. smoked at 200 to 250-degrees for about an hour, then transferred the ribs to a 1-in sheet pan equipped with a baking rack. filled the bottom of the sheet pan with saranac ginger beer, covered the whole pan with aluminum foil, and let bake at 225-degrees for 3-hrs (there was a water bath in the bottom of the oven as well, probably unnecessary).

mixed together crushed garlic, a splash of apple cider vinegar, dry mustard powder, yellow mustard, salt and pepper, some fennel greens, and some diced feta cheese, and then drizzled in some canola oil until at the desired consistency. dressed some thin slices of raw turnip with this mixture, plated with the ribs.

[notes: i didn't take the strap off the back of the ribs, and didn't put much thought into a dry rub because i was in a rush. some additional ingredients in the dry rub would have helped a bit. also, the ginger
beer steam-bath flavor didn't really attach to the meat the way i thought it would. there are a few samples out with some friends now, we'll see what they think (about the ginger beer flavor and whether or not it exists). basically, the simple smoky flavor and tenderness of the meat was complimented very well by the fresh turnip and garlicky dressing. smoke on.]