GrillinFools
Baby bake ribs, marinated in a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte and then seasoned with a pumpkin pie inspired rub before being slow smoked to perfection on a charcoal grill. These pumpkin spice ribs may be the best fall barbecue recipe ever. And a coffee brine or marinade doesn’t have to have pumpkin flavors if that’s not your thing. Any coffee brine can add a wonderful nuance to your flavor profile.
Also, check the pro tip on skinning the membrane from these ribs.
It’s my fault. I’m the reason there are pumpkin spice tortilla chips, pumpkin spice Oreos, pumpkin spice Little Debbie Snack Cakes, and pumpkin spice ice cream. I love all that pumpkin spice stuff. Particularly the beers and the coffees. Of course I had to make some pumpkin spice barbecue!
This is not my first foray into this. I made Apple Pumpkin Ribs back in the day. That was well over a decade ago. More recently I made Pumpkin Butter Ribs, but I wanted to get to the root of the pumpkin spice craze.
Time to focus on the most iconic pumpkin spice flavor out there.
We grabbed two of those large/grande/vente size cups of pumpkin spice coffee from Starbucks.
I honestly am terrible ordering at Starbucks so I just order “the biggest” when I pick out my coffee because I don’t know the difference between large, grande and vente.
Pumpkin Spice Ribs Ingredients
- 1 slab of baby back ribs, membrane removed
- 2 large/grande/vente pumpkin spice coffees (not pumpkin spice latte – more on this later)
- 2 tablespoons of coarse salt
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon ground hatch chili
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon of granulated garlic (sub garlic powder)
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
Before we get to the ribs, take those two coffees and put them into the fridge. We don’t want to cook the ribs with the coffee. We want to brine the ribs in it.
Next up is skinning the ribs by removing the membrane on the back of the ribs.
Best way to skin ribs?
Grab a paper towel to grab the edge of the membrane at the corner of the back of the ribs and give it a little pull and keep re-gripping and pulling until there is enough membrane free of the meat/bones to grip between the thumb and the side of the forefinger and then grip it and rip it. You should read the last five words of that last sentence with a southern accent.
You just did it, didn’t you?
Here I am gripping and ripping on another slab of ribs I cooked the same day I cooked the pumpkin spice ribs:
Sorry, I didn’t have a pic of me skinning the ribs from this recipe.
But the same process works on any pork ribs.
Here is the skinned slab I will be using for this recipe:
Grab one of those big resealable plastic bags, the two pumpkin spice coffees, and the salt.
Don’t do this until the coffee is below room temperature.
Again, we don’t want to cook the ribs with the coffee.
Add the ribs to the bag:
Then pour in the salt and both cups of coffee:
Seal the bag and give it a good shake to dissolve the salt. The salt in the coffee creates a wet brine.
Why brine ribs?
The salt in a marinade changes it into a brine. Specifically a wet brine. Brining is better than a marinade in three ways. First: the salt will push liquid out of the brine solution and into the meat making the ribs juicier. Second: since the liquid going into the ribs is not water but is in fact tasty (in this case coffee), it also makes the meat tastier. And third: salt will tenderize the meat. So we get juicier, tastier and more tender meat. This is why we brine.
Place the bag of coffee and ribs in the fridge for 2-12 hours.
Don’t brine more than 12 hours. Much longer than half a day and we transition from brining to curing.
We’re making BBQ not ham.
Why didn’t we use a pumpkin spice latte? Because a latte has milk in it.
I want the pumpkin flavor. I don’t want the milk. But that’s just me.
After a few hours, remove the coffee brined ribs from the pumpkin spice coffee brine:
Mix together the rest of the ingredients and blend them completely and give the wet brined ribs a healthy coating, bone side first:
Always do the bone side first so that the natural concave of the ribs holds the rub up off the cutting board.
If you do meat side first, when you flip the ribs over a bunch of the rub will stick to the cutting board.
So start the bone side.
Then flip over to the meat side:
Then use what missed the ribs and landed on the cutting board to season the edges of the coffee brined ribs:
Pumpkin spice ribs ready for the grill:
How to Grill Pumpkin Spice Ribs
Now prepare the cooker. I set up my Hasty Bake Grill with a load of Rockwood charcoal.
I banked the coals to one side and put a chunk of pear wood on top and put the ribs on the other side once the inside of my grill hit 300F:
One of the many beautiful things about the Hasty Bake Legacy 131 is there is no vent in the lid. That means the smoke past the meat on the way up to the top of the grill, but then has to go back down past the meat again to escape the cooking chamber. This results in an almost vortex type system and the food cooks a little faster while getting a ton of great smoke action on the protein.
I’ve been doing the foil boat thing a lot lately. In fact, the first time I did the foil boat, I did it with some pumpkin butter (see, I told you I’m crazy for the pumpkin flavored stuff).
For these ribs, I went old school.
Smoke, heat and time.
At 300F degrees inside the grill, I don’t have to do anything but wait a couple hours for the perfect competition style ribs.
So I waited:
This may be the best way to keep coffee hot, but I’m not sure how safe it is.
But you had to know I would get myself a some of that pumpkin spice coffee:
How to Know When Ribs are Done?
The bones know when the ribs are done. No need for a thermometer. When the bones peek out 1/3″-1/2″ the ribs are competition style which means tender, but with a firm bite. Once they poke out more than 1/2″ then they are fall off the bone.
A little over 2 hours later, my ribs were ready. Wanna know how I know?
Those bones tell me these ribs are done. They are tender but with a firm, clean bite. Not fall off the bone tender.
If you want that, got another 30 minutes and watch those bones jut out even more.
Time to pose for the camera:
This is thirsty work:
Time to slice:
Hungry?
A little closer:
How’s that smoke ring and glisten?
New and improved Pumpkin Ribs Recap
So this is the new and improved version from the apple pumpkin ribs. Pumpkin spice and coffee infused into the pork AND a better balanced rub on the outside. It comes down to this. If you dig all the pumpkin spice <insert product here> and you like barbecue, you’re gonna dig this. Don’t worry if you don’t like coffee. It doesn’t taste like java ice cream. It has a sort of earthy/sweet flavor to the meat that is subtle. It’s not going to give you a jolt of caffeine or anything.
If you have any questions or comments about these Pumpkin Spice Ribs, feel free to leave them below or send me an email.
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Recipe Card
Pumpkin Spice Ribs
Equipment
- 1 Resealable plastic bag, large
Ingredients
- 1 slab Baby back ribs Membrane removed
- 2 Large/vente/grande pumpkin spice coffees from Starbucks
- 2 tablespoons Coarse salt
- 1 tablespoon Pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon Ground hatch chili
- ¼ cup Brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon Granulated garlic
- 1 teaspoon Sweet paprika
Instructions
- Put the coffees in the fridge to bring the temp of them down below room temperature
- With a paper towel, remove the membrane from the bone side of the ribs
- Place the ribs in a resealable plastic bag and pour in the coffee and salt
- Push as much air out of the bag as possible and seal the bag
- Shake the bag to dissolve the salt being careful not to pop the seal
- After 2-12 hours, remove the ribs from the coffee brine
- Combine the rest of the ingredients and blend well to create the rub
- Season the ribs bone side first
- Flip over and season the meat side
- Tamp the edges and the ends into the seasoning on the cutting board to completely cover the ribs
- Prepare the grill for two zone or indirect grilling with coals on one side and nothing on the other
- Target temp inside the grill is 300F
- Place smoke wood (we used pear) on the coals and the ribs on the side with no coals
- Close the lid and wait approximately 2 hours for competition style and 2.5 - 2.75 hours for fall off the bone
- Remove the ribs from the grill and allow to rest for a few minutes before slicing
Video
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