Coffee Brined Ribs

Coffee brined ribs is one of those barbecue recipes that came to me organically by simply seeing an ingredient and wanting to come up with a way to use it. In this case, my lovely wife has been making coffee before bed to make iced coffee in the morning. She’d left about eight ounces in the fridge and I had bought some ribs but wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. In a matter of moments, I texted her to let her know that I would make her more coffee as I used what she had prepared to brine ribs for one of my latest BBQ rib recipes. She of course replied with the rolleyes as I’m always trying weird ingredients when I BBQ. The resulting rib recipe was something I threw together and liked it so much that it goes on the site after just one stab at it.

Coffee Brine Ingredients:

• 1 slab baby back ribs, skinned and cut in half
• 8 oz coffee
• 20 turns of fresh black pepper
• 1/4 cup salt

Rub Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp granulated garlic
• 1/2 tbsp granulated onion
• 1/2 tbsp smoked, Spanish paprika

If you are familiar with brining, the general ratio is 1 cup of salt per gallon of fluid. But here it looks like I’ve doubled up the salt. I have because I only had about three hours to brine. If I could’ve brined overnight, I would’ve used 1/8 cup salt with 1 cup of coffee. But I wanted to accelerate the coffee brining process.

How to Make Coffee Brined Ribs

After skinning the ribs and cutting them in half, combine the the top four ingredients in a plastic bag, making sure that the salt is dissolved by sloshing the sealed bag around. Refrigerate the coffee brined ribs for 2-12 hours (if longer than 4 hours, cut the salt in half)

Here are the coffee brined ribs after three hours in the fridge:

Why Brine Ribs?

Putting meat in a salt water solution will cause the liquid from the salt solution to push into the meat making it juicier. The salt water solution will break down connective tissues making it more tender. And since we aren’t using water, but coffee, that fluid that goes into the meat will flavorize it making it more flavorful. Juicier, more tender and more flavorful? Seems like what we all want in all of the dishes we serve.

Back to the recipe. Combine the rest of the ingredients to make a rub.

Remove the ribs from the coffee brine, but do not rinse them. I normally do when I brine, but I want that coffee film to provide a flavor glue for the rub. Always rub the bone side first:

Then rub the meat side (bone side down):

The reason to always rub the bone side first, is the natural concave of the bones keeps the rub elevated off the cutting board and thus it won’t stick to the board:

Now, this was the second cook in which I used my newest toy, the PitmasterIQ:

It’s an ingenious little device.  Essentially, it’s an air blower attached to a hose and a thermometer:

When the temp drops below the temp you set the PitmasterIQ to, the fan blows onto the fire keeping the temps constant. They can be attached to just about any grill and make that grill a set-it-and-forget it smoker. The unit runs $140 and makes smoking incredibly easy and low maintenance. Click here to purchase one.

Now back to the barbecue recipe.

How to Smoke Coffee Brined Ribs

The basic process is to get my kamado grill to between 275F-325F and cook the baby backs and smoke them for 2 hours. They will not be fall off the bone. If you prefer that, smoke them for 90 minutes, then put them in foil with a little liquid and cook for another 45 minutes and then back over the heat for 15 minutes.

I used plum wood for this smoke. If you don’t have access to plum and want to know what woods you have access to pair well with whatever protein, click here. 

Here are the coffee brined ribs about an hour and 15 minutes  into the process:

I jerked the ribs that are on the bottom grate in the picture above.

I’ve got some nice pull back on the bones starting to happen on the ribs:

At a little over 2 hours (I was playing with the settings on the PitmasterIQ so it was a little longer than normal) the ribs looked like this.

As you can tell, the sun had set by the time I took these pics.

Here’s some better pull back after two hours of grilling:

The two things to look for when determining if ribs are done are the bones pulling back and the flex of the slab, or in this case half slab. A raw slab can be bent in half, but as the meat cooks and the fat renders out, the slab firms up. You don’t want them to have no flex (that’s overdone), but pay attention to how much they bend and how much the meat pulls back from the bones. Those two factors will tell you when the ribs are done.

Pull the ribs from the grill and take them inside.

And here they are sliced:

Coffee Brined Ribs Recap

The earthiness of coffee is the perfect complement with its natural savory/sweet profile for these barbecue ribs. The coffee brine intertwined musically with the savory/sweet rub making this barbecue recipe an instant conversation starter. I can’t wait to do them again and brine overnight. A coffee brine might be something I add to all sorts of rib recipes, no matter the rub. I bet it would’ve been great with the jerk ribs. Think of it. A total Jamaican theme – coffee and jerk. Guess what my next slab of ribs will be?

If you have any questions about the above dish please feel free to comment below or shoot me an email.

If you liked the coffee brined ribs, then click here for similar BBQ recipes.

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Print Recipe

Coffee Brined Ribs

A refreshing rib recipe on more than one level

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time2 hours hrs

Total Time2 hours hrs 10 minutes mins

Course: Ribs

Cuisine: BBQ

Servings: 3

Ingredients

• 1 slab baby back ribs skinned and cut in half
• 8 oz coffee
• 20 turn freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup salt
• 1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• ½ tbsp granulated garlic
• ½ tbsp granulated onion
• ½ tbsp smoked Spanish paprika

Instructions

• Skin the ribs and slice in half
• Combine the coffee, salt and pepper in a resealable plastic bag and shake until the salt is dissolved
• Add the ribs to the brine and refrigerate for 2-12 hours
• Remove the ribs from the brine, rinse clean and pat dry with paper towels
• Combine the pumpkin pie spice, brown sugar, garlic, onion and paprika to make the rub
• Apply the rub to the bone side first
• Flip over and repeat on the meat side
• Prepare the grill for two zone/indirect grilling with coals and smoke wood on one side and nothing on the other
• Target temperature inside the grill is 275-325
• Place the ribs on the side with no heat and close the lid
• When the meat pulls back from the bone a half inch (about 2 hours) the ribs are ready to serve

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

See Full Bio

BBQ Grilling

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This article was initially published on: July 16, 2012