Tina Cannons TV Show Winning Beef Ribs!!!

We recently had the pleasure of having Miss Tina Cannon come and prepare some food and make some videos with Captain Ron.  If you are not familiar with who Tina is, let me fill you in.  She is known as the Pearly Girl because you’ll rarely find her cooking without her signature pearl necklace around her neck.  Tina is an award-winning BBQ Chef with over 350 trophies and awards under her belt.  She won the 2018 World Food Fire and Ice challenge as well as winning Reserve Grand Champion in BBQ.  She has been around the culinary world for over 35 years, having trained overseas as well as locally and is a classically trained chef.  Most recently she led Bobby Flay’s Team on Food Networks BBQ Brawl and was the overall winner of the Netflix American BBQ Showdown.  That is quite the resume if you ask us!

One of the main dishes that helped her on the path to winning on Netflix was her BBQ Plate ribs that she made.  The seasoning that she used was what the judges and hosts called Herb’s de Provence.  What it really was is her own blend of herbs and seasonings and it blew the judges away.  Once that she ventured from the traditional Salt & Pepper way of seasoning this type of BBQ, the judges all thought that she was nuts.  Well, they all wound up eating their words ( and all of the ribs) and were amazed with the flavors that she was able to achieve.

When we approached Tina about the possibility of filming some videos together, we knew that the one dish that we had to reproduce was these ribs.  She immediately agreed and plane tickets were booked and our journey with Tina began.  Tina is no stranger to cooking on a Big Green Egg as she is a member of their ambassador team, #BGETeamGreen.  For us, the best part is that we are very proud to have her as a valued member of Team FOGO.  Tina uses FOGO while cooking at her beautiful compound in rural Georgia as well as in her many cooking classes and events that she participates in.

Now, back to those ribs.  We started with a rack of plate ribs from Raikes Beef Company.  These 4 bone ribs were as meaty as any that we have ever seen.  Plate, or Short Ribs come from the lower part of a cows rib cage, right behind the brisket.  As a matter of fact, you may hear them referred to as brisket on a stick because the meat comes out so similarly when done right.  This cut benefits from being cooked low and slow.  The reason for this is that during this process, is that while they are cooking, all of the internal fats break down over time and render, making for a soft and tender bite, if not cooked properly, this can be a very tough cut to consume.

Other than the seasoning and some minor adjustments, this method of cooking ribs is pretty much the standard way to do it.  We made these on a kamado style grill, the Big Green Egg, but the same method would apply to whichever smoker you are cooking on. Whether it is a kettle style grill such as a Weber Kettle, a barrel type smoker like a Cotton Gin or Pit Barrel, an offset or even a pellet grill such as a Green Mountain Grill or Traeger, the method is basically the same. 

The main difference from the way that we would have normally done it was when it came time to wrap the ribs.  The addition of wine and broth was definitely a nice touch but not out of the realm of normal rib smoking actions to take.  While we would normally wrap our meat in pink butchers paper or other food safe butchers paper, Tina used aluminum foil.  The reason we did it this way for the video?  We wanted to duplicate the ribs that she made for the show to a tee.  Since they did not have the paper available on the show, she had to use foil.  This was the original way to do it but once that Aaron Franklin taught us about the butcher paper method, the smoking meat world changed.  The paper allows the meats to breathe a bit more and doesn’t cause the meat to steam as much as the foil does.

We would like to thank Tina for the pleasure of having her share her recipes, talent and fun-loving attitude with us.  Her and Captain Ron had a great time making these videos and she really showed us her culinary talents as well as her great sense of humor.  Heck, she even made Ron an honorary Pearly Man.  We hope that you enjoy the video and recipe as much as we did making it.  We also hope that Tina will come back and make some videos with us.  Would you like to see that as well?  Let us know in the comments section of the video.  Also, please don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, hit the thumbs up button on the video and leave us a comment.  We love to hear from you!  Until next time, thanks for being a part of the FOGO Family and we will see you the next time on The FOGO Life……

Directions:

1. Fill your grill with FOGO Super Premium Charcoal and prepare it for indirect smoking at 250°.
2. Trim almost all of the fat off of the ribs.  Rub the entire rack of ribs with the bouillon base so it is fully coated.  Sprinkle them with kosher salt, black pepper and apply a generous coat of Tina’s European Blend Seasoning.
3. Add at least 4 chunks of the Bourbon Barrel smoking chunks around the heart of the fire.  Once the smoke turns blue, place the Meater+ Thermometer into the center of the meat, making sure that the probe does not touch the bone.  Set the Meater for 165° and lay the ribs in the center of the grate.
4. When the temperature reaches 165°, check for good color.  If they are not quite where you want the bark to be (it should be fairly black in color and be a bit hardened) then leave them smoking until the bark is set.  
5. Once you are happy with the bark, remove the ribs from the smoker and lay them on a sheet of aluminum foil that has been folded in half, leaving the “dull” side exposed.  Set the Meater for 195°.  Pour the red wine and broth over the meat, sprinkle a little more of the seasoning and seal the aluminum foil fully closed.
6. Place the ribs back on the grate and continue to cook until you have reached the desired temperature.  To check for doneness, pierce the ribs with a toothpick or thin probe.  If the probe does not go in with little to no resistance, continue cooking until it does.  Each rack of ribs can finish at a different temperature so the probe method should be the final test for doneness.
7. Normally, we would remove them from the smoker once they are done and place them in a Cambro container or a small cooler with towels wrapped around the foil.  To keep with Tina’s method that she did on the show, we removed them from the foil and sliced them in between the bones as soon as they were done.  They were incredible.  I have to wonder if they would have been any better with the rest period.