Ribs or no ribs, that is the question?!?!

I personally have never bothered with the ribs. Lately I’ve thought about maybe keeping them and throwing them on the smoker. Anyone do this? How do they turn out? Any tips? Thanks!

the best if you have space and time

I kept some off a big sow last year and smoked the. They're good, but not as much meat.

I've done it, but generally my experience has been that if they're big enough to have sufficient meat they are too tough. Maybe there's a way to cook them that makes them tender, but I just don't bother any more.
I don't skin or gut them nowadays, I only take the leg quarters and back straps.

Not a lot of meat on them, but if cook them long and slow, they are all right.

I too take the hams and back and feed the rest to the buzzards now. Much easier and cleaner. As for making them tender, my wife uses the crock pot. After my electric smoker died, she put some ribs with dry rub in for about 6 hours one day. They were more tender than smoked but lacked the smoke flavor obviously. So tender, if you tried to pick it up by the bone, that's all you ended up with in your hand. MUCH easier than running the smoker too.

I breaded and fried some off a good size sow a couple years ago. Not a lot of meat but they were great to snack on while the rest of her parts were on the smoker.

I have never heard of fried ribs before, I would have thought doing that would have made them pretty tough?

Nope, not tough at all.

This is what I do. A buddy wanted a couple of hogs saturday and said he wanted the ribs so I told him to get his tail over to my house and get ready to do some gutting. I told him I could fill his freezer with quarters and backstrap but he wanted to cook up some ribs. If I want ribs I go to HEB.

I threw a few slabs of wild hog ribs on the grill, seared each side and put it on the warm side of the pit for an extra 30 minutes or so with some bbq sauce, then took it off and put them inside a baking pan and added some more BBQ sauce and a few table spoons of water and covered with aluminum foil and bake at 225 degrees for 3 to 3.5 hours and long enough just to have a firm texture and was dam good. I don't like it when its overcooked and bones fall out.

Good but not much meat.....still worth the effort.....

We usually grill a few when cleaning and grinding hogs for sausage.....makes a good easy snack....

Good and I agree with SnakeWrangler, worth the effort.

I have tried, they aren't really worth keeping. Not enough meat and tough. Backstraps, hams and front quarters for sausage is what I do.

I can usually find some nice flank steak around the lower rib cage. That stuff is pretty good for carnitas and fajitas, especially if it has fat on it.

Any of you guys that say not enough meat ever clean a dove or a 10” crappie?

At least you can chew those. By the time a hog's large enough to have meaty ribs, it's old enough to be pretty tough!

Plus, I'd just rather not have to deal with gutting a hog. I'm satisfied with what I get from the leg quarters & back straps.

YMMV

I like them but don’t like dealing with them if the hog is really big. Anything between 60 and 150 works out.
They are well worth it if they are done right. I season mine and sear them. Them wrap me and indirect heat steam till they soften up a bit. Then unwrap em and let em dry up a little. They take flavor really well.

Use can use a sawzall and split the hog up the middle and have loin chops. I cut the ribs across the center line so you have the best on both

or split

Done right they are great. They will never bee what domestic ribs are, mostly because of the marbled fat, but they are sure worth the effort... IF you know how to cook.

Reason I usually don't cook them is because I'm looking for the fat (ribs tend to have a decent amount, more so than the whole muscle cuts in the leg quarters) for sausage so I sacrifice most of the ribs/flank to sausage meat.

A friend of mine cooked the ribs off of a 140-lb hog last week. He actually cooked them sous-vide, then threw them on the grill with some dry rub to finish. They were mighty tasty, nice and tender.

I use the ones from smaller hogs ("eater" size, 60-80 lbs.) to add flavor and meat to slow-cooked black beans. After a few hours you can slide each little bone out, so I just take the whole rack out of the beans, shred the meat, then dump it back in for the rest of the cook time.

You guys are missing out!!!! Ribs are the best part.