Smoked Beef Dino Ribs

Ingredients

• 1 rack beef plate short ribs (3-4 bones, 2.5-3kg total), membrane removed
• 30g coarse kosher salt
• 40g coarse black pepper (16-mesh butcher's grind if you can get it)
• 1 tbsp neutral oil or yellow mustard, for binding
• oak or hickory wood chunks (4-5 fist-sized pieces)
• 200ml beef stock
• 100ml cider vinegar
• 100ml water
• 2 bunches spring onions (about 16), trimmed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• flaky sea salt
• 4 long red chillies, thinly sliced
• 150ml cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp sea salt

Method

1. Make the pickled chillies first so they have time to soften. Warm the cider vinegar, sugar and salt in a small pan until dissolved, pour over the sliced chillies in a heatproof jar, and leave to cool. They'll be ready in an hour and keep for weeks.
2. Prep the ribs. Slide a butter knife under the silvery membrane on the bone side, grip with kitchen paper and peel it off in one sheet — leaving it on means the smoke and rub can't penetrate, and it goes leathery. Trim any thick fat cap down to about 5mm; you want fat to render, not sit in a slab.
3. Rub a thin film of oil or mustard all over the ribs — this is just glue for the rub, you won't taste it. Mix the salt and pepper in a bowl and apply heavily on all sides, pressing it in. The ribs should look properly seasoned, almost crusted. Leave at room temperature for 45 minutes while you set up the smoker — cold meat going onto the smoker stalls harder and longer.
4. Set up your smoker or kettle for indirect cooking at 110-120°C with oak or hickory chunks for smoke. If using a kettle, bank the coals to one side with a water pan on the empty side — the water pan stabilises the temperature and keeps the chamber humid, which helps bark formation.
5. Place the ribs bone-side down on the cool side of the grate. Close the lid and walk away for 3 hours. Don't open it. Every time you lift the lid you lose 15-20 minutes of cook time and let smoke escape.
6. After 3 hours the bark should be set — dark mahogany, dry to the touch, not tacky. From here, spritz with the stock-vinegar-water mix every 45 minutes to an hour. The spritz cools the surface slightly, which extends the smoke ring and stops the bark drying out into a crust you can't bite through.
7. Around the 5-6 hour mark the ribs will hit the stall — internal temp parks somewhere between 70-78°C and refuses to climb. This is evaporative cooling and it's normal. You can either ride it out (another 2-3 hours, best bark) or wrap tightly in butcher's paper or foil to push through (faster, slightly softer bark). For dino ribs the unwrapped ride-it-out method gives you that asphalt-black bark you're after.
8. Start probing at 7 hours. The ribs are done when a probe or skewer slides into the thickest part of the meat between the bones with zero resistance — like pushing into warm butter. Internal temp will be 95-99°C, but the probe feel is the real tell. Numbers can lie, the probe doesn't.
9. Rest the ribs, loosely tented in foil, for 45 minutes minimum — an hour is better. Resting is not optional on a cut this size; the muscle fibres need time to reabsorb the juices or you'll lose half of them to the board.
10. While the ribs rest, toss the spring onions in olive oil and a pinch of salt. Char them over the hot side of the BBQ (or in a screaming-hot griddle pan) for 2-3 minutes a side until blackened in spots and floppy. Char hard — the bitterness of the burnt edges is what cuts the richness of the rib.
11. To carve, slice between the bones with a sharp knife — the meat should pull back from the bone slightly already. One bone per person, served whole and theatrical. Finish with a pinch of flaky salt across the cut faces.