Smoked ribeyes with BBQ spiced rub
✨ Season ✨ Smoke✨ Rest ✨ Sear ✨ Enjoy ✨ That's all you need to do for perfectly cooked ribeye steaks right from the smoker. The Kitchen Bucket List shows you how easy it is to do. We even have another great homemade BBQ rub to share with you. It can be used to dry brine or put on just before smoking.
Equipment
- Pellet smoker (BBQ with indirect cooking system)
- Remote thermometer with sensors
- BBQ tongs
- BBQ spatula
Ingredients
- 3 ribeye steaks
BBQ spice rub
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
Instructions
Make the BBQ spice rub
- In a bowl, add all the ingredients for the BBQ spice rub and mix until combined.
- Decision time: dry brine or not. We dry brined a boneless and bone-in ribeye overnight with the BBQ spice rub in the refrigerator. The other boneless ribeye was seasoned just before we put all the steaks in the pellet smoker. I cover the differences in the post.
- If you dry brine or add the BBQ spice rub just before smoking, each requires you to coat and rub the BBQ spice rub onto each steak.
Smoke the ribeyes
- Follow your smoker's preheat startup and let it get stable. Then increase the smoke chamber's temperature to 250℉.
- If you did not dry brine the ribeyes, season them just before placing the sensors for the remote thermometer.
- Once at 250℉, get the dry brined ribeyes out of the refrigerator and insert the sensors for the remote thermometer.
- Bring the ribeyes out and put them in the smoker. It took 1½ hours to reach our level of preferred doneness. This will be less if you like your steak rarer or more for medium well.
- Once you get to within 5℉ under your preferred doneness, pull the smoked ribeyes.
Rest, Sear, & Enjoy
- Time to rest the steaks for 10 minutes. I know it's tough, but so worth the end result. I just bring them back inside.
- Our smoker has a flame broiler, so I increased the temperature setting to high and opened up the cover for the flame broiler to get the grill grates nice on hot.
- After the 10-minute rest, I brought the three smoked ribeyes out to the smoker and placed two away from the flame broiler. The first seared quickly, just under two minutes on each side. I then placed it away from the broiler and brought the last two over to sear.
- A key thing to watch with the pellet smoker flame broiler is that the heat continues to build as the pellets are added. So, watch the second batch carefully while searing. I flipped them right after a minute on each side.
- Bring the steaks in to enjoy.
Notes
Smoked ribeyes specifications: Two, 1¾-pound boneless ribeyes that were 2¼ inches thick. One, 2-pound bone-in ribeye that was 2¼ inches thick.
Charcoal BBQers: This recipe can be done on the BBQ too. The key thing is having an indirect cooking system and your favorite smoking wood.
