This recipe for wine braised smoked beef short ribs will walk you through the process of smoking them low and slow to make them tender and enhancing the already amazing flavor by foil braising them with a nice sweet wine.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 6 hour
- Smoker Temp: 225-240°F
- Meat Finish Temp: 190-200°F
- Recommended Wood: Cherry
- 2-3 lbs beef short ribs
- Spicy brown mustard
- Jeff's Texas style rub (Purchase formula here | Purchase bottled rub)
- Foil pan
- Sweet red wine or Cabernet (your choice)
- Jeff's barbecue sauce (Purchase formula here | Purchase bottled sauce)
Please note that my rubs and barbecue sauce are now available in 2 formats– you can purchase the formulas and make them yourself OR you can buy them already made, in a bottle, ready to use.Beef short ribs tend to have a lot of fat. I try to pick out ones that are meaty but even so, you'll have to do some trimming.
Yes, the fat is full of flavor but there is plenty of marbling within the meat and you don't need the fat on the outside surface of the meat to make them moist or tasty.
Fat and silver skin removed. A very sharp knife makes this job a lot faster and easier.
Place the beef short ribs in a plastic zip top bag and squirt about ¼ cup of spicy brown mustard down in the bag with about ¼ cup of Jeff's Texas style rub (Purchase formula here | Purchase bottled rub).
Massage and roll the bag to coat all of the ribs with mustard and rub paste.
Once the mustard and rub are applied, let them sit in the fridge overnight to really soak up the flavor of the rub. You can also use the ribs right away or as soon as you want to. Any time at all with the mustard and rub will do them good.
Do not rinse the ribs once they are finished marinating.
They are now ready to cook. I recommend placing them down in a disposable foil pan and leaving them there during the entire cooking process.
Looking delicious!
Setup your smoker for indirect heat at about 225-240°F
Leave the ribs in the pan for best results.
Apply cherry smoke for about 2 hours. (other smoking woods will work fine)
After applying smoke for about 2 hours, pour about 1 cup of red wine (I used Rosa Regale but any similar red sweet wine will work great)
Cover the pan tightly with foil and let it cook for 3 more hours at 225-240°F.
During this time, the wine and beef juices will create steam and the beef will get a good braising inside the covered pan serving to super tenderize the beef.
Note: Don't want to use wine for some reason? You can use sparkling red grape juice or even regular red grape juice to get a similar effect and flavor without the alcohol content.
After the braising process, uncover the ribs and turn up the heat to 300°F. If your smoker won't heat to that high of a temperature, use the grill or even the oven to finish them off.
Mix 1 part Jeff's barbecue sauce (Purchase formula here | Purchase bottled sauce) with 2 parts of the red wine (for example: 1/3 cup Jeff's sauce + 2/3 cup red wine) and brush the ribs really good with this mixture.
Brush the ribs with this mixture 2-3 times during the next hour.
Use a Thermapen or other accurate digital meat thermometer to test the temperature of the ribs. When they reach 190-200°F and are fork tender, they are done.
“Tender” is the best measurement of when these beef short ribs are done.
Another visual indicator of doneness is the meat pulling back from the bone.
Once the beef short ribs are finished cooking, serve immediately.
You can also order the formulas for my rubs and sauce and make these yourself at home. Grab those HERE and download immediately.
Smoking Meat: The Essential Guide to Real Barbecue – The book is full of recipes and contains tons of helpful information as well. Some have even said that “no smoker should be without this book”!
With more than 1000 reviews on Amazon.com and a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars, it comes highly recommended and is a Bestseller in Barbecuing & Grilling books on Amazon.
Smoke, Wood, Fire: The Advanced Guide to Smoking Meat – Unlike the first book, this book does not focus on recipes but rather uses every square inch of every page teaching you how to smoke meat. What my first book touched on, this second book takes it into much greater detail with lots of pictures.
It also includes a complete, step-by-step tutorial for making your own smoked “streaky” bacon using a 100 year old brine recipe.
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Printable Recipe
Wine Braised Smoked Beef Short Ribs
Ingredients
- 2-3 lbs beef short ribs
- Spicy brown mustard
- Jeff’s Texas style rub recipe
- Foil pan
- Sweet red wine (((Rosa Regale or similar)))
- Barbecue sauce/glaze
Instructions
Step 1: Remove the fat
- Beef short ribs tend to have a lot of fat. Remove the fat and silver skin. A very sharp knife makes this job a lot faster and easier.
Step 2: Apply the Rub
- Place the beef short ribs in a plastic zip top bag and squirt about ¼ cup of spicy brown mustard down in the bag with about ¼ cup of Jeff’s Texas style rub recipe
- Massage and roll the bag to coat all of the ribs with mustard and rub paste.
Step 3: Let them Marinate (optional)
- Once the mustard and rub are applied, let them sit in the fridge overnight to really soak up the flavor of the rub. You can also use the ribs right away or as soon as you want to. Any time at all with the mustard and rub will do them good.
- Do NOT rinse the ribs once they are finished marinating.
- They are now ready to cook. I recommend placing them down in a disposable foil pan and leaving them there during the entire cooking process.
Step 4: Smoke the Ribs
- Setup your smoker for indirect heat at about 225-240°F
- Leave the ribs in the pan for best results.
- Apply cherry smoke for about 2 hours.
Step 5: Foil braise with wine
- After applying smoke for about 2 hours, pour about 1 cup of red wine (I used Rosa Regale but any similar red sweet wine will work great)
- Cover the pan tightly with foil and let it cook for 3 hours at 225-240°F. During this time, the wine and beef juices will create steam and the beef will get a good braising inside the covered pan serving to super tenderize the beef.
- Note: Don’t want to use wine for some reason? You can use sparkling red grape juice or even regular red grape juice to get a similar effect and flavor without the alcohol content.
Step 6: High heat finish
- After the braising process, uncover the ribs and turn up the heat to 300 °F. If your smoker won’t heat to that high, use the grill or even the oven to finish them off.
- Mix 1 part Jeff’s sauce with 2 parts of the red wine (for example: 1/3 cup Jeff’s sauce + 2/3 cup red wine) and brush the ribs with this mixture.
- Brush the ribs with this mixture 2-3 times during the next hour.
- Use a Thermapen or other accurate digital meat thermometer to test the temperature of the ribs. When they reach 190-200°F and are fork tender, they are done. “Tender” is the best measurement of when these beef short ribs are done. Another visual indicator of doneness is the meat pulling back from the bone.
Step 7: Serve
- Once the beef short ribs are finished cooking, serve immediately.
Can I use texas short ribs (from the plate rib) on these? Any adjustments needed? Picked up a beautiful pack from Porter Road.
At step six where the heat is increased to 300 degrees, should the braising liquid remain in the container, get dumped, or be partially removed?
PS. Appreciate you three recipes for rub and BBQ sauce.
Thanks
You can remove some of it if there's too much in there.. i.e. more than about ¼ inch of liquid in the bottom but it's good to have some in there for steam.
Step six—-does NOT state if braising liquid is to be removed or not before the 300 degrees last hour hi temp cooking. I did remove 90% of the liquid and used bourbon bacon BBQ sauce and sweet red wine to baste. Excellent combination. Forget Cab red wine for braising—-it’s for drinking with beef, NOT for braising. I used a sweet red wine such as Blaufrankisch sweet red Hungarian wine. Great for braising and not bad for introducing a neophyte wine drinker to red wine without any snobbery.
You can remove some of it if there’s too much in there.. i.e. more than about ¼ inch of liquid in the bottom but it’s good to have some in there for steam. As for the wine.. use what you have and it's perfectly ok to use the “not so good” stuff for cooking.
I feel guilty not buying your rubs or BBQ sauce, because me and the Mrs. usually make our own, but now I see you sell them at amazon so I will check them out soon, have a section in my yard for cooking gas grill, gas smoker,charcoal grill and oiless propane fryer, without your tremendous recipes these grills would me nothing keep them coming. Going to try your smoked stuffed meatloaf wrapped in bacon this week will post a picture, thanks again.
Made these once before and they were awesome, everyone enjoyed them, and am making them again this weekend. But have a question.
After braising do you remove ribs from liquid or can I remove some of the liquid before saucing? Last time they were almost submerged and don't know how much the saucing accomplished. Tasted great tho.
Also thinking of reducing braising liquid in pan to serve at table.
Thanks for all the great recipes.
Chris
Use the braising liquid as gravy for mashed potatoes
Hmm… sweet red wine? I guess so for some but I'll definitely be using a Cabernet. It's the all time classic for beef.
Cabernet will work great on these.. I like to step out of the box sometimes and change things up but the classics are always there. Enjoy!
Made these a week ago. Only difference was I used a Cabernet Sauvignon instead of a sweet wine, beef likes a Cab and it was great. If you don't like these you don't like beef.
Hi Jeff, I made these for the fourth of July. They were without a doubt THE best short rib recipe ever. Well worth the time and totally effortless. Love, love, love your recipes!
Thanks!
Hi Jeff, just wondering if your rubs and sauces are gluten free??
Yes..the rub recipe and the sauce recipe is designed to be gluten free.
Let me know if you have other questions about this.