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" It&amp;#039;s hard for me to understand why beef ribs aren&amp;#039;t more popular. Their rich flavor shames a steak. And the way they look on a plate, all humongous and black and shiny with rendered fat \u2014 Eocene, you might say \u2014 is a head-turner at parties. If you haven&amp;#039;t slow-smoked a beef rib, and chances are you haven&amp;#039;t, this Labor Day weekend is the time. Summer deserves a finale. When I first confronted a beef rib, I laughed. Actually, it was more like I was trying to hide my astonishment. Anybody else see this ludicrous thing on my plate? Barbecue doesn&amp;#039;t lend itself to humor. The food is serious \u2014 mounds of pork shoulder, brawny beef briskets. But the first time you see a beef rib, you pretty much can&amp;#039;t help yourself. The thing is so big, it&amp;#039;s freakish. It calls to mind Fred&amp;#039;s rack of dinosaur bones.  Everything about a beef rib seems wrong. It&amp;#039;s not a pork rib. It&amp;#039;s not beef brisket. It&amp;#039;s just this ostentatiously huge thing. Except that it&amp;#039;s not ostentatious at all. It just is, almost shy in its enormity. And what the beef rib offers is as sublime a taste experience as you can imagine. Smoked low and slow, its toughness is gradually transformed into its truest self: a luscious meatsicle. Tender as an Elvis ballad, robust as the Clinton economy. Truth is, that first beef rib of mine was, as is the case with so many firsts, not all that great. Its look was impressive. But, though I didn&amp;#039;t know it at the time, the problem was that it was too tender. Its masculine flavor had been emasculated. What this particular upscale barbecue restaurant had done was cook the beefy character right out of the beef rib. Don&amp;#039;t make the same mistake. How? Don&amp;#039;t treat it nice. Don&amp;#039;t put the rib in an oven and bake it. Don&amp;#039;t tenderize it unnecessarily with a brine. No marinade. No fancy spice mixture. Simply rub generously with kosher salt and cracked black pepper, about evenly, unless you prefer one flavor of the other, in which case, use roughly two-thirds of one and a third of the other. Then put them bone-side down on the indirect area of your grill or smoker, add a mild, slow-burning hardwood, such as oak, close the lid, and let a drowsy 225-degree smoky heat work its transformative magic. Figure one bone per person. Keep the fire steady, adding wood as necessary. And wood is necessary. Beef ribs can take smoke. They like smoke. Smoke deepens their flavor, making them more the beef rib they want to be. About six hours later, you&amp;#039;ll open the lid to reveal a glistening thing of gigantic beauty. Inside, they should be soft as velvet but maintain a meaty integrity. The meat should not fall apart in strands. Rather, it should slice. Better still is to take it in your hands and tear with your teeth, like Fred. --Jim Shahin writes about barbecue for the Washington Post Have a question for him? Leave it in the comments or e-mail him. You can also follow him on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a15574/beef-ribs-recipe-083012/>