trimming ribs

For restaurant, it will be too labor intensive to trim a bunch of ribs. You can find a wholesaler who does it for you.

From Ribman.com:

quote:

St. Louis Style Ribs originate from pork spareribs and are prepared by removing the brisket bone approximately parallel to the rib side, exposing cartilage on the brisket bone side. Skirt meat is removed.

Also, until I get Ribs 101 updated (man does it look pitiful check out this site:

How to select and prepare ribs

I know this is an old thread, but here is a great site on trimming spareribs for those of us really new to all of this.....

http://www.smoker-cooking.com/rib-preparation-step-1.html

An "easy" way (it's not perfect but it works) is to look for that white line of fat that runs perpendicular to the rib bones, then above that the meat grain is obviously running left to right.

Take a SHARP SHARP knife and cut down that line.

The "hard" way is to turn the slab over and look at the rib bones and feel. Find the longest and it will be a knuckle. Cut just above the knuckle and follow that same position above each bone.

For a restaurant,talk to a Sam's meat cutter,or a major grocery that still cuts a lot.

I know several of the guys, that will go places that sell a lot of ribs,and trim for them.

They can pick up a couple hrs, on their time,and churn out your weekly sales.

They might even work some,and take it out in meals for the family.

Went to the local grocery store chain last night looking for this weekends hunk o' meat, selection was a little sparse so I looked at some Hormel ribs (for pork I always like to use Hormel, I trust their quality). The Saint Louis cuts were $2.09/lb, and the regular cut ribs were $4.35/lb. Now I am not a big fan of the Saint Louis cut because of all the junk above the ribs, those white rubbery fingers. But I remembered the link that SmokinOkie has listed above and the wonderful video it has about trimming your own ribs at home. So I figured that I would give these St. Louis cuts one more try.

It really is as easy as the video makes it look. One suggestion is to make sure you have a good knife when you do this. When I first watched the video I thought that the trimming seemed like a lot of waste, But, heck I am throwing those trimmings in to cook also.

Thanks again guys for a wonderful forum and all the help. It really is appreciated.

By the way the ribs looked fabulous by the time I finished trimming them. I didn't take any pictures when I did this because I did not want a visual record of the hack job I was afraid I was going to do the first time, but now I wish I did have the pics.

Thanks again!!

I think you might have this backwards. Ribs with all the cartilidge bones above the ribs are called spare ribs. St. Louis cut ribs are spare ribs with the those cartilidge bones cut off along with the brisket flap on the back.

$4.35 is high, whatever you were buying. I wouldn't even pay that for Baby Backs.

Normally full spares will outweigh the st. louis cut by a lot, so you can look at the package weight and see the difference.

Like RD said, the description is key to understand.

Russ