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Kaddy Shack ribs are, simply, incomparable. But there are specific reasons that have to cautiously explained so that their "secret" remains unpublished.
When most people speak of ribs, they usually have in mind pork spare ribs, which are the least expensive of rib cuts and the least lean.
St. Louis-style and Kansas City-style barbeque ribs are a variation on a full slab of spare ribs, associated with sweeter sauce.
Memphis—and Kaddy Shack—prefers loin ribs. These are much more expensive and shorter in supply because they are shorter, smaller, leaner, meatier, less fat than spare ribs. You will feel considerably worse messing up a slab of these on your barbeque grill than a slab of spares.
Smaller, loin ribs are easier to handle than spare ribs, and often the meat falls off the bones entirely. There is no cartilage to try to bite through on these as opposed to the cheaper spare ribs, though some rib afficionados miss this attempt to get more eating than is actually there. Loin ribs have a naturally finer and sweeter flavor anyway. They are the Cadillac of barbeque ribs, and they are the only ribs that Kaddy Shack will countenance. So Kaddy Shack’s ribs are the best there are—loin ribs hand-selected so the bad parts aren’t folded and hidden.
Memphis-style barbeque uses "dry rub". Instead of cooking the ribs in sauce and repeatedly basting them with the mixture, a Memphis barbequer will simply cover them with a mixture of pungent spices absorbed into the meat during the smoking. Sauce is added when served, or on the side.
The woods used for smoking are equal parts mesquite, apple, and hickory.
Kaddy Shack does go in for an extravagant amount of smoke time. Most preparers smoke their ribs for six to eight hours. Kaddy Shacks are in the slow cool smoke for fourteen, yet are never overcooked because the temperature is carefully watched and adjusted throughout—very slow cooking taken to an even greater extreme.
Finally, there’s that sauce with its unknowable extra ingredients. Woodard’s sauce is not intrinsically sweet like the Kansas City and St. Louis blends. It is—truly—the best barbeque sauce anyone has ever had or ever will.
