Rib Tips, anyone?

who's got the best? the worst? and what in your opinion, makes a great rib tip?

my vote for best: exsenator's, down in markham. but locally (for me) in the far NW 'burbs, i'll take famous dave's in carpentersville.

woodman's sells moo & oink rib tips by the boxful..... are they any good?

thanks!

jim

Jim,

You have 20 posts and should know about the search function. give it a shot. I recently tried Honey 1's tip and link combo. excellent! sauce on the side and it was tasty by itself. nothing but good good good. check it out some time. also GNR listings for BBQ - try everyone of those places before you throw out a famous daves. that is the essence of this board. to avoid the mundane and chain if there is better.

peace and good eating,

Jim

what makes good rib tips

properly smoking the tips
which means to render the fat
and not drying them out in the process
and covering them with a good sauce and served with white bread
there are better cuts of tip smaller and less fatty


the places that serve tips are mainly souths side
like
leons lems barbara anns uncle johns and captin kurts
all around 66th and cottage grove

sweet bay rays (i am sweet baby ray) has excellent rib tips properly prepared with excellent sides in additon to fries sbrbbq.com for the addresses and menu

i am also recently returned from texas where we went to 26 bbq places and ate in 18 of them in 5 days i know more about bbq now that is for sure

i have just been to the 5 places i mentioned last week with my nephew duce a chef at the wood dale location

id be interested to hear about folks who have eaten tips on the south side and who have eaten tips at sbr

as one who has id be shocked if anyone thought that the quaily of meat the sauce or the proper cooking of the meat was done better on the south side than at sbr

we properly prepare food and offer good service and hospility when you come to our places

no brag just fact and if you have had less that that id like to know about it and would ask you to talk to the managers when you are at our places and let them know on the spot so they can correct any problem that you may of had

Dave, in my opinion, there are 3 types of rib tips. There are those I like, there are those you like and then there are those we both can agree are bad. Down the road from your Wood Dale location is a pizza place that also sells Broasted chicken. Sorry, I can't remember the name but it's in the little strip mall with the 7-11 east of you. The reason I mention them is I think this is a place we can put into that 3rd category. I can't imagine anyone liking their rib tips.

Now, on to categories 1 and 2. I've had the tips many times at SBR. If you look back on this board you'll find I was the first one to post about SBR even before it actually opened. But the lack of chew, some call it bark, knocks the tips down on my scale of favorites. The tips at SBR are just too soft for my taste. You refer to it as moist. To me it's mushy.

But as I posted on another thread, not everyone feels the same way as me. Obviously you're one of those. And I've met and talked briefly with Chef Paul. I have a lot of respect for him. But in talking to him, two things are apparent. First, he's very capable and proficient with turning out a product the way he wants it. Second, he has his own idea regarding foods and will not cook what he doesn't like. So the rendition of tips sold at SBR are the way Chef Paul likes them. And they are an excellent rendition of that style.

But I prefer the style of Honey 1. That's my preference. That doesn't make them better than SBR. It just means they are a different style that I find more to my taste. I wish I liked SBR's tips better since they are so close to where I work. But when I need tips, I'm making the trek into the city.

I've only been to Sweet Baby Ray's once, so take that for what it's worth. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't really my style of barbecue for the reasons midas mentioned. The rib tips were too mushy. I am, however, a fan of your spicy sauce which I thin out with cider vinegar to get to a consistency and flavor I like (on its own, it's a bit too thick and sweet for me.) For point of reference, my top two tips spots are Uncle John's and Honey 1, and my two favorite sauces are Lem's and Honey 1's.

Hillary's, North Chicago, Waukegan and even Kenosha Wisconsin. Great rib tips.-Dick

budrichard wrote:Hillary's, North Chicago, Waukegan and even Kenosha Wisconsin. Great rib tips.-Dick

If you get them from Hillary's make sure to get the sauce on the side. I wasn't a fan of it. Heavy on the chili powder for my taste.

Park ribs at 7000 w. Archer has been serving up great rib tips for years.Its not very well knownbut you get your moneys worth.

Uncle John's, Honey 1, and Lem's - in that order - are my go-to Chicago places for tips.

baby ray wrote:sweet bay rays (i am sweet baby ray) has excellent rib tips properly prepared with excellent sides in additon to fries sbrbbq.com for the addresses and menu
~snip~
as one who has id be shocked if anyone thought that the quality of meat the sauce or the proper cooking of the meat was done better on the south side than at sbr

Baby Ray,

Rib tips being one of my favorite vegetables I recently headed to the wilds of Wood Dale for Sweet Baby Ray's "properly prepared" tips. I was especially interested as you said you would be shocked if anyone thought South Side tips were better than Sweet Baby Ray's. Baby Ray, I suggest you sit down.

On this given day SBR's rib tips were bland, tough, slightly dry, served room temperature and contained not a hint of smoke. I will give you SBR rib tips were "smaller and less fatty", though I'd say disconcertingly uniform and lean, with lean not being an attribute I am looking for in a rib tip.

Sweet Baby Ray's Tips


I find the following five Chicagoland BBQ joint rib tips significantly superior to SBR's, crisp fat in the fire flavor, caramelized outer layer yielding to toothsome slightly fatty interior, wood smoke present, but not overpowering. Its all about the contrasts, bland uniformity is the antitheses of what I find enjoyable in rib tips, or BBQ in general for that matter.

Uncle John's Tips


Honey 1's Tip/Link


Barbara Ann's Tip/Link


Lem's Tips


Smoking M's Tips


This was not the first time I have visited Sweet Baby Ray's in Wood Dale, and given the commitment to BBQ of Dave Raymond, aka Baby Ray, will not be the last, but we are very much on different pages when it comes to BBQ.

Enjoy,
Gary

hello
those are some mighty fine looking pictures
and some fine looking tips

all thing being equal
lets say i agree that the folks serving tips for so many years would have great tips

this is where my problem comes in
first of all the tips i ate were nothing like the pictures you posted

second knowing that they are cooked on the chicago style aquariaum smoker
and owning one myself
it is hard for me to understand how they produce consistantly and have it done right and hold it keeping it crispy like you say i mean how many slabs can they do
when i was by these places they had no traffic
and the quality of the meat was not great
i try not to be negitive but that was the honest truth

we use southern pride smokers with young hickory wood for smoke flavor
we apply our own rub
hard to imagine how any tip could be flavorless with all the fat and even more so with a rub put on
i know how they could be old and dryed out
i apologize for that we should not be serving product like that
i do well know that everything is not done how we would like it all the time
and you should know that we constantly try i mean every single day to address and work on our problems we put a great deal of effort into growing our business and doing the right things for the right reasons

i would be happy to meet you and any of the other guys in wood dale or i will go to the places of your choosing and talk about and eat some Q
we always want to get better and i always want to know more about bbq

if you want to see competion bbq in elk grove(behind elk grove high school off arlington heights road south of the kennedy about 2 miles) this coming weekend there will be 47 teams competing for 15k in prize money ribs chicken pork brisket
the team my nepew duce and i are on is called the church of swinetology

now these guys really think they know bbq
and they do just like you and i do
thats the kool thing about it


we try to cook baby backs and chicken so we serve it fresh out of the smoker for lunch and dinner service
on thursday we get fresh not frozen ribs for the weekend

we go thru an average of 500lbs of rib tips a week in wood dale (our 36 seat location)
to me rib tips are
tips, frys, lots of sauce covering the frys and tips and white bread
cant have one without the other

to sum things up
what you say sounds correct
i agree
it was not my experience i will get back out and try some more

i am a big fan of honey1 and his tips
i know charlie robinson he is the nicest man i have met in 25 years in the food business
charlie only uses his aquariam cooker for rib tips
bbq is hard to produce and is best when served at its peak when it is done just right
when you cook in volume it requires adjustments and compromising
that should not be confusued with lack of care or effort or quality
unlike other foods bbq is still great past its perfect serving time and also great for leftovers
but more than anything bbq is fun it is a noun and a verb and its a dialog not a monalog its what you do with friends

thanks have a great rest of the weekend

My recent re-visit was uniformly not very good in the meat department. I think Ronnie Suburban and GWiv have already pretty much expressed the way I felt about my food. The only thing I will add is that a couple of the sides (the corn bread and the corn casserole in particular) were very good to excellent. So you've got that going for you, which is nice.

baby ray wrote:knowing that they are cooked on the chicago style aquariaum smoker
and owning one myself it is hard for me to understand how they produce consistantly and have it done right and hold it keeping it crispy like you say

It sounds like you may need to study and practice harder. BBQ knowledge comes with patience and practice. There is obviously something they are doing that you are not.

baby ray wrote:we use southern pride smokers with young hickory wood for smoke flavor
we apply our own rub
hard to imagine how any tip could be flavorless with all the fat and even more so with a rub put on

It's hard for me to imagine as well. Yet, you have managed to find a way.

Baby Ray, as I stated in the other thread, I think that the only improvement needed to the product at SBR, is more smoke. Maybe the bbq needs to be smoked longer, or more wood needed. From looking at the photos which G Wiv posted, the rib tips at SBR, do look very dry and lacking the smoke caramelization on the rib tips. SmoqueBBQ, which also uses a Southern Pride smoker, is able to get the caramelization of the bbq to almost be as dark as bbq from an aquarium style smoker. Of course, SmoqueBBQ doesn't sell rib tips, although their baby back ribs and their St. Louis ribs, are darker than the ribs at SBR.

baby ray wrote:second knowing that they are cooked on the chicago style aquariaum smoker
and owning one myself
it is hard for me to understand how they produce consistantly and have it done right and hold it keeping it crispy like you say i mean how many slabs can they do

Dave, I just drove today, during the heart of the storm, to Honey 1 from Itasca, just for the tips and link combo. I wish they weren't so consistent. Every time I go I half-heartedly hope they are awful. I hate making the trek down there. Today it was 2 hours round trip. But every time I've done it it's been worth the trip.

I don't care how they do it. I don't care that he doesn't have the volume you do. I understand the compromises you have to make and I respect them. But my taste buds are all that matters to me.

I personally am a big fan of rib tips to the point that I actually prefer them to a rack of ribs. I would say that the best tips I had were at Interstate BBQ in Memphis and i used to enjoy the tips at Robinson (although lately, I have found them to be dry). For me, the tips should be somewhat fatty which of course would be mostly rendered by extended cooking with a good ratio of meat to cartilage (as found with 3 1/2 and down ribs) and with a light crusting (not the tough coating found on many tips - don't need a pork floss). I also like a good smoke flavor but I understand that many people are sensitive to this so I'm not too harsh on this point.

In my experience cooking Pork Butts, Picnics and Brisket, the hardest task is to develop some sort of consistency. While pork butts and picnics are rather forgiving, briskets can be a challenge for even the most experienced cook and I know that I have created my share of shoe leather briskets. Overcooking can produce dry pork but in a controlled environment of the likes of a Southern Pride cooker, I would assume that dry meat would be the result of holding the product for an extended period of time or reheating too aggressively.

When I cook butts for people, I taste the finish product and if its too dry, it doesn't go out. I don't hesitate as well to send BBQ back that is too dry. I can't imagine any restaurant would want to alienate or lose a customer over a plate of tips that are too dry.

G Wiv wrote:
Honey 1's Tip/Link

I am nominating this picture for the next Pulitzer Prize in Photography, I just have to figure out how to make its subject matter about breaking news.

im on it
im printing the post and pictures and will have a meeting with our chefs and managers
and talk about everything written mainly the quality of the tips in your pics as well as some very good comments about what tips should look and taste like

funny ive nerver had anyone articulate rib tips before and because our customers come in and praise them and we sell so many of them
i was and to a reasonable degree am still thinking that our tips are good i know the pictures dont lie

i am interested in making our food as good as we can and bringing happiness and satisfaction to our guests

thanks for your constructive comments and like i said im on it

offer stands to come to our place or i will go to yours i want to know about Q

you boys and girls take care and have a good week

baby ray wrote:funny ive nerver had anyone articulate rib tips before and because our customers come in and praise them and we sell so many of them i was and to a reasonable degree am still thinking that our tips are good

De gustibus non disputatum est.

You might add an "LTHForum special" and see how it goes, but if you have a successful product that your regular customers enjoy, changing it to suit the rarified tastes of the BBQheads on this forum might be a mistake. While this forum's patronage has helped to draw attention to a number of restaurants, it has not succeeded in keeping several of its favorites in business.

Although I agree with what has been said further up in this post by the LTHer's, I can't have but the utmost respect for a guy that is consistently looking to better his product. This actually goes one step further. SBR may have better "traffic" than some of the smaller shops but that's obviously not the end goal. His is to have the best bbq he can produce and that says a lot.

I think Chicago BBQ has grown in leaps and bounds since this forum. Many of the places may not have changed but the appreciation and the understanding of what goes into making a quality product has. This is the reason I keep coming back to LTH. I love when someone doesn't just think of doing something but jumps in and doesn't stop until they feel it doesn't get any better (which is a never-ending labor of love).

Keep up the good work...