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Chicago is arguably the most underrecognized barbecue city in America.

While Memphis is known for its pork ribs and Kansas City is known for burnt ends, Chicago is known for a more obscure barbecue delicacy: rib tips.

Rib tips are a classic story of an unwanted cut of meat that was literally given away by Chicago meat-packing houses at the turn of the century, only to be transformed into a famous barbecue dish by African American cooks and pitmasters on the city’s South Side.

What are rib tips? Consider the anatomy of a pork rib. At the top, closest to the spine, is the baby back rib. Below that, extending down to the breastplate (bottom) of the carcass is the full sparerib.

If you are a connoisseur of spareribs, the rib tip is the thick, knuckle-like part on one end. If this part is trimmed off before cooking, this results in a St. Louis-cut rib. The remaining trimmed strip of meat that contains the bone and cartilage that was connected to the breastplate of the hog is where rib tips come from.

These strips of meat, fat and cartilage are then smoked, chopped into smaller pieces, and served with various sauces and side dishes.

Boogie's Chicago Style BBQ 1767 Texas Pkwy, Missouri City; boogieschicagostylebbq.com Closed Sunday & Monday.

Burns Original BBQ 8307 De Priest; burnsoriginalbbq.com Closed Sunday & Monday.

Rays BBQ Shack 3929 Old Spanish Trail; raysbbqshack.com Closed Sundays.

Lonestar Sausage & BBQ 13712 Walters; lonestarsausagebbq.com Rib tips on Thursdays only.

Feges BBQ Spring Branch 8217 Long Point; fegesbbq.com/spring-branch Closed Mondays.

In Chicago, the classic combination features rib tips served on a bed of French fries and doused in a sweet tomato sauce, with a couple of slices of white bread for sopping up the juices and sauce. In Houston, specifically in Missouri City, Boogie’s Chicago Style BBQ offers this traditional version.

Beyond that, rib tips have taken on a life of their own, especially in East Texas-style barbecue.

Burns Original BBQ has offered a version of rib tips for years, calling them “small rib ends” on their menu but often referred to as “regulars.” This is purportedly an abbreviation of the word “irregulars”, meaning the various irregular pieces of pork spareribs left over after trimming, including rib tips as well as the small bones on the narrow end of a slab of spareribs.

Ray’s BBQ Shack serves rib tips as its own meat plate, with the sauce on the side, in true Texas fashion. Lonestar Sausage & BBQ offers a rib tip special on Thursdays only.

The Spring Branch location of Feges BBQ has rib tips on the daily menu, with a twist on the traditional preparation and sauce application. Co-owner and pitmaster Patrick Feges trims his own spareribs, smokes the remaining strip of rib tips and chops them into smaller pieces. He then fries them to add a crunchy texture on the outside and covers them in a choice of several sauces including curry lime, Alabama white, sweet Thai, and hot red.

To be sure, rib tips in their various forms can be an acquired taste. The chunks can be as much gristle and cartilage as they are edible meat, and it can take some work to dig out those tasty morsels of rendered pork fat and meat.

I compare it to deconstructing a whole blue crab at your favorite seafood joint. If you can get through the time and precision it takes to pick through the shell, you will be rewarded.

It’s the same with rib tips. Your efforts on some pieces will yield small amounts of meat and others will yield glorious pieces of perfectly smoked and tender pork. 

A native of Beaumont, J.C. Reid graduated from the University of Southern California after studying architecture and spent his early career as an architect in New York City. He returned to Texas in 1995, retiring from architecture but creating his own Internet business in Houston. As his business became self-sustaining, he began traveling Houston and the world to pursue his passion: eating barbecue.

He began blogging about food and barbecue for the Houston Chronicle in 2010 and founded the Houston Barbecue Project in 2011 to document barbecue eateries throughout the area. Just last year, Reid and others founded the Houston Barbecue Festival to showcase mom-and-pop barbecue joints in the city. The 2014 event drew 2,000 guests to sample meats from 20 restaurants.

You can view more of J.C.'s work at jcreidtx.com.

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