"Boneless" BBQ ribs at a restaurant!

I haven't seen BW's boneless ribs yet. I'm due to visit there soon.

My butcher makes a boneless rib for caterers, etc. His are, like you said, a boneless Country Style Rib. His mostly go 7-8 oz.

When I used to grill for the Minnesota Pork Producers Assn, we did a product from Harkers called "Mr. Rib". It was ground pork, seasoned and stamped or pressed to look like a riblet. We held them in a roaster, covered in BBQ sauce. The longer they sat, the better they tasted. Served them on a bun with a pickle. Very easy for a bunch of farmers to do.

McRib, by McDonalds is a ground and stamped type of product, simular to the Mr. Rib. I'm not a regular there so I'm not sure if that one is still around. The Pork Producers Checkoff fund poured alot of money towards the development and promotion of McRib, hoping to increase pork consumption.

I'll check on some prices and get back to you.

Roger

Hey Roger,

I've actually been to the BWW there in Mankato, after watching the Vikings training camp. Actually, I went to college there at MSU, otherwise known as the "Harvard of the Midwest" , and we make trips back to Kato every now and then to either see the Vike's training camp or a Mavericks' Division 1 hockey game.

Yeah, you should make a trip down to your local BWW ... good place for happy hour (cheap beer), and I like the boneless chicken tenders with Spicy Garlic or Thai sauce for a meal. Much more filling than regular chicken wings. BWW is a pretty decent sports bar with lots of big screen TVs all over.

They do a good job of promoting their new foods. I regularly go to a BWW in the Twin Cities, where I live, and when they had a new Captain Morgan's rum sauce for wings several months ago, they promoted it by having the whole wait staff wear pirates' bandanas on their head and T-shirts that promoted the new Captain Morgan's rum sauce. Now the whole wait staff is wearing T-shirts that say "Boneless Ribs" on them. I'm waiting to see if they give them little pig ears to wear on their head .

That was interesting what you said about the Mr. Rib and the McRib sandwich. You'd think the people who would order that would definitely get in line to order real "boneless ribs" that aren't a ground and stamped kind of product.

Buffalo Wild Wings is a nice place. Clean, bright, good ventilation, some of these older places haven't upgraded theirs and you can really stink when you get home. The place does a great business. We watched the Wolves/Lakers semis down there.

The owner, Tom Frederick, is from the Frederick Happy Chef family. Nice, hard working guy.

The Mr Rib products I refered to, are trying to use a different part of the hog, trim meat.

Trim meat is the stuff on a butcher hog that is taken off the carcass with a whizzer knife or from a packing sow. Sows are striped of their loins, and the rest is ground into trim. Jimmy Dean buys a lot of sows.

If you see a huge tenderlion thats been soaked in the high % of extra stuff, it's off a packing sow. Tenderloins should weigh about .85 pounds each from a young tender 250# hog. Big BB ribs are from smaller breeding stock, or over finished market hogs.

That's why the ground, and textured products were promoted, to get rid of our trim. The targeted market at McDonalds is good place to move large quanities. The Mr Rib are at a lot of Fairs and Town Celibrations. I've seen them at the MN State Fair at the East end of the Cattle Barn.

The Hockey Mavs have moved their Friday night home game against the Gophers to Excell in St. Paul. Excell is hurting with the NHL not playing. They came to MSU and made them an offer they couldn't refuse. As of yesterday they had 13,000 tickets sold, 17,000 is capacity. The extra revenue is going to fund some of the non revenue sports, and athletic scholarships.

Thanks for educating us a little more on the various pork cuts, Roger.

Hey, and I bet this is a first for these forums: we're talking Q and hockey in the same thread! Bet people haven't talked about those two topics together in these forums before. Ya think they can tell we're from Minnesota ?

well i don't really know how to say this so i will just do it.
for 3 years i taught vocational culinary arts in a nearby boys prison.
when i 1st saw these boneless things i almost had as big a shock as when our grouper here in florida started arriving from vietnam (made my executive chef at the convention center open those for a month as you can never be too sure )
but ya know what?? i was really suprised by the lack of shrinkage on the little formed ribs and the taste wasn't half bad so i convinced the food service manager there to order a bottle of liquid smoke as we were using 2 huge vulcan convection ovens to cook them in. the guys loved them!!!

Yeah, the people really do like the ground and formed ribs. Good margins in them too. I think the were 5/pound or around $.50 with a NICE bun. We found you can't use a poor bun, they make half the sandwich.

They are easy to hold too. Try doing that with a butterflied chop sandwich.

mnhogfarmer,
you were right on the margins. the food service manager loved that!!!!
and the guards (opps i meant "youth care workers")
loved the no bones as it cut way down on the risks of homemade shivs and tattoo needles lol
jack

Hey guys, how would you cook them using shoulder or butt? cook to 145-150 pull slice then finish in oven, or slice and cook slow in smoker, now you have my curiosity up,I think when i put a load of butts in this week I will have to slice some up and try. I will report back later in the week.


HOGWILD BBQ & GRILL

When I'm cooking butts, if I want "sliceable" I just cook them to about 180 and then slice. All I do is debone them if they have bone in, but the rest I do just as I would a normal butt.

does that answer the question Cook17?

Thanks Smokin,I'll try that first,I wonder if you could put in holding cab and then slice as needed then sauce and throw on charbroiler for to glaze. we do a sunday brunch with leftover pulled pork and chicken, this might be a nice change.

Cook17,

How well does a small northern town like Luck, WI, support your Q restaurant? Did you have to kind of "educate" your customers on what authentic Q is all about, or were they pretty knowledgable about Q when you started up?

The Twin Cities, with it's millions of residents, barely supports any non-chain Q restaurants. In fact, the most famous BBQ place in the Twin Cities, The Market BBQ near downtown Minneapolis, isn't even really an authentic BBQ joint, in my opinion. I've read about that place for years, and finally made it to eat there a couple months ago. Sure, they cook their ribs (spare ribs and beef ribs) over a wood fire, but they only do it for 45 minutes! It's more like grilling than slow cooked Q. The result is very tough ribs (especially the beef ribs, which were like shoe leather) and they were not smokey tasting at all. Plus, they have no pulled pork or brisket on the menu (our waitress didn't even know what brisket was). And people rave about this place! But I think that's because most Minnesotans don't know what authentic southern-style Q tastes like ... or at least they didn't know until Famous Dave's came to town and put up restaurants all over.

It's odd that in Rochester, Minn., there are at least two very good non-chain Q restaurants. But in the Twin Cities, I can't think of any.

Bottom line is you'll have to expand Westward, Cook17, to the Twin Cities. We need more independent Q restaurants!

Studly, town and area support is very good, we have been open for around 10 months now and we run around 140 to 200 meals on fridays and 100-150 saturdays, we run around 75-100 racks of ribs a weekend not huge numbers, but we have not had a losing month yet.
We do brisket ,pulled pork ,ribs ,chicken. home made pizzas we have Beer& wine. we can seat about 135 with patio we put in back of building. I have had Many many many people from all over the area (twin cities also) tell me that our ribs beats the H*ll out of Famous Dave ribs hands down. We make all of our side dishes by hand no premade. it is kind of funnie when we open everyone ask is Brisket cornbeef, once they had a taste of it we sell a ton of it now.
I would love to expand to like St Criox Falls WI and then move West, if I could find help doing this I'm ready. We also do catering last summer we did around 3500 meals catering. we our open thursday - sunday only right now, I and the wife still work out full time. ANY FORUM MEMBER THAT STOPS IN I WILL GIVE AS MANY SAMPLES AS THEY CARE TO TRY.

I remember those McRibs at McDonalds. They weren't bad. I waited to respond here to see if McDonalds still carried them.(I'm not a regular there.) I didn't see them listed on the menu at our local one. I think I wouldn't go to McDonalds for a bbq rib sandwich, but they seemed to be a good selling novelty thing as I remember.
cook17, It sounds like you are just in the right place with a good product to me! Best of luck to you. How do you manage working full time and the restaurant? Do you have other employees?
Peggy

2greyhounds, it gets to be some long weeks, but we enjoy the people and working for ourselves. I do all of the smoking my wife makes all of the sides and we have a cook that helps alot, on a friday night it take around 7-8 people to run the place, but looking at my labor for the first 10 months we ran around 11.5 % I think that not bad, cost of goods 34% I'm happy so far.

Thanks Dave
HOGWILD BBQ&GRILL

Dave,
I work with a lady from Wisconsin. She said they were in Luck on a July 4 weekend and had snow! WOW! I wish you the best. And I've been complaining because we had a freeze here last night. It sounds like you have a great place. What kind of smoker do you use? Do people in Wisconsin prefer one type of meat over another? And what type sides do you prepare?
Peggy

Peggy, we use a Friedrich rotisserie,small cookshack, sides slaw,potato salad,corn muffin,baked beans thats the home made sides, misc deep fryed potatos. pulled pork biggest seller, then ribs brisket and chicken, but this weekend I smoked up 60 # of brisket and we ran out saturday night, I did boneless rib thing sunday for our brunch I cooked one butt to 175 sliced loaded with sauce told everyone boneless ribs sold out in two hours.

Dave, what did your customers think of "boneless ribs"? How'd they turn out compared to what you were expecting?

I went to Buffalo Wild Wings last week and was all set to order their "boneless ribs" just to see how they prepared them. Well, it must have been just a temporary menu addition because they are no longer serving them.

I assume they probably had precooked and presliced pork butt, and then maybe they put them on the grill for a few minutes before serving to crisp up the outside. I guess I'll never know, now!

Studly, customers loved them, I cut 1/4 by 1/2 I did not grill just put them in a hotel pan with sauce. i had planed to throw on char grill put ran out of time. to me it was just small pieces of smoked pork, but I did use my rib rub not my pulled pork rub, I would like to slice first then smoke and see what that taste like. but I will keep putting them on my sunday brunch.

Studly, We stopped into the Mankato BW's this weekend looking for boneless ribs and they had never heard of them!

Oh well, we made a night of it anyway. We had just left a wedding show where we had a booth advertizing our BBQ Catering for upcoming weddings.

I overheard a gal and her sister say they were planning their wedding while at BW's and we landed a job while at the bar [they bought us beer too].

Roger

Hmmm, must have just been a temporary menu addition for the Twin Cities Buffalo Wild Wings. Or maybe they were test stores.

Glad to hear you got some new biz from your trip there, Roger, not to mention free beer!