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My Method for Holding and Re-heating Ribs

FM Former Member
I have been cooking Hormel St. Louis Style ribs since January or so and I have people almost every day tell me that my ribs are the best they have ever had. (including the famous restaurants in Memphis, Birmingham, Texas, etc ...) I take little to no credit for this for I am not a "great" cook by any means. I attribute all of my success to Cookshack.

My name is Jeremy Telford and I own a place in Ruston, LA (population 20,000 when the university is not in school - 30,000 + when they are) called Dowling's Smokehouse. We are a very simple operation consisting of barbecue sandwiches, ribs, sides, and so on. I subscribe to the philosophy of "Keep it Simple Stupid." What I strive to do is to take 2 or 3 or 4 things and do them very, very well. I do not try to do too much. I think many times people overextend themselves and lose focus of what got them to where they were in the first place. Then the quality on the front end begins to suffer.

For ribs I season both sides with Cookshack Rib Rub and Cookshack Spicy Chicken Rub and cook for 4 hours at 228 using an even mixture of apple and hickory wood. I use the commercial grade SM150 model for all of my cooking. They come out GREAT every single time! I start the ribs around 6:00 - 6:30 every morning and they are ready b/t 10:00 -10:30. (yes I do have people that come in to eat ribs at 10:00 in the morning) I then wrap them in the wide type heavy duty aluminum foil and place in an holding oven with humidity control that I bought from KaTom.com restaurant supply. Does not get any easier.

Any leftover ribs are refrigerated overnight and reheated the next day in the holding oven. When they are good and hot they are served to customers or pulled and used for the beans. My personal opinion is that the reheated ribs are just as good as the fresh ones as long as they have not dried out too much. Just got to keep an eye on them.

Any questions, please ask and I will get back to you when I can. Thanks. I love this forum and have learned so much from it.

Jeremy Telford
owner, Dowling's Smokehouse
Ruston, LA 71270
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FM Former Member
I agree that keeping it simple is the way to go. I will be starting small takeout resturants in my area( in which we have none).In this area,southern NJ, we have very few bbq places. I think I have to create a need for this food and buy using your simple operating technique, each store will keep there expences low and hope to draw enough customers to make a good profit.Do you have a special receipe for your beans.Any input would be greatly appreciated. galco@comcast.net Thanks for your help. Christys
FM Former Member
I don't have a special recipe for baked beans. I use Allen's brand that I buy from Ben E. Keith Foods.

NOTE: I have found that the best way to hold ribs is not in foil - instead do this.

When you take ribs out of the smoker wrap them very loosely in 18" wide food service film. Make sure that there is no way for air to get to the ribs until you are ready to cut them. The film does a much, much better job of keeping the ribs from drying out. Be sure to wrap them loosely as the film will shrink some due to the heat and puncture the film if you wrap too tightly.

WoodBurner: I use a Metro holding cabinet and set the humidity level to 8. I have no idea what this equates out to though. Mine is an un-insulated holding cabinet and if I could do it over again I would spend the extra money to get the one that is insulated. Mine really causes the kitchen to get warm.

At the end of the day I just simply move to the walk-in. The next morning I get them into the holding cabinet around 7:30 - 8:00. The most I hold them for is one day. If they start to dry out I get one of my employees to pull the meat off of the bone and we sell a "Pulled Rib Sandwich." This makes an excellent sandwich and is really becoming popular. And I actually make better money by selling the sandwich as opposed to slabs or rib plates.

Hope this helps you guys some.

Jeremy Telford

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