By Dylan Clay
In general, the best substitutes for short ribs include chuck roast, chuck eye steak, and – depending on the type of “short rib” we’re referring to – brisket.
It’s important to understand the different “short” ribs that exist on a cow though as your “best” substitute will change.
To preface this article, it’s important that we differentiate the different “short” ribs that exist on a cow as the recommendations for “substitutes” will be different, especially with regards to a recipe.
The two types of short ribs you’ll find on a cow are:
Beef chuck ribs come from the beef “chuck” primal.
They span ribs 1-5 and are cut just above the brisket.
The reason these bones are left in the chuck is because they are quite literally short bones that don’t work well for steaks (ie. like the adjacent rib primal which create ribeye steaks).
Meaning, chuck “short” rib bones are just as they sound.
At a grocery store you’re not apt to see these sold as whole 4-bone slabs. Rather, they’re sliced between the bone and they’re halved to create “English” cut short ribs.
Chuck short ribs are sourced from between the chuck and rib primal meaning they share characteristics with both; You get the forward beefy flavors from the chuck and the marbling/richness from the rib.
Short plate ribs, or what most people call “dino” ribs are sourced from the plate primal.
Short plate ribs are found in the forequarter of the cow and are located behind the brisket and below the beef rib primal.
The short plate is so-called due to the fact that it does not contain the brisket.
Specifically, short plate ribs are rib bones 6, 7, and 8. The bones in this section are long, wide, and oval shaped.
There is way more nuance for why these specific bones are selected and it all has to do with musculature. To learn more about this anatomy, be sure to read this article.
Suffice to say, due to its location, it tastes eerily similar to brisket.
The muscle also has enough intramuscular fat to remain moist during the smoking process, where-as chuck short ribs tend to dry out (which is why they’re braised in a liquid).
With the above out of the way we can now list adequate substitutes.
Similar to chuck short ribs, chuck roast comes from the chuck primal.
Chuck roast is essentially an extension of the beef rib.
A whole beef chuck eye roast is fabricated into several cuts, including a chuck roast.
The size of the individual roasts are at the discretion of the butcher but typically, you’ll get 6-8, two-pound chuck roasts.
Here’s the above chuck roast, cubed up:
To me, the chuck roast is the closest you’ll come to the taste of a chuck short ribs. You can simply cube these up into similar sized pieces (like the meat on top of a short rib bone) and then braise.
While chuck eye steaks aren’t common in lots of places, they can work well if you don’t want to buy 2+ lbs of chuck roast.
In the chuck, the “ribeye” muscle starts to taper towards the front, meaning the shared qualities of the beef rib and the beef chuck taper towards ribs 2 and 3.
Chuck eye steaks share similar muscles to that of ribeye steak (minus the “eye” muscle). They typically have noteworthy marbling and pronounced beefy flavors.
You can similarly halve the chuck eye steak to resemble a beef short rib to then braise.
The closet alternative to plate short ribs is beef brisket. This isn’t surprising those as they’re in close proximity to each other.
It’s no wonder why lots of websites will call plate short ribs, “brisket on a stick.”
Here’s a cross section of a short rib:
Here’s a cross section of a brisket:
The brisket and short plate ribs above used the same rub, were smoked on my weber kettle and then finished in my electric smoker.
If they look similar – it’s because they are.
I’d even wager to say if you were to offer someone a slice of each, they wouldn’t be able to discern the difference.
Beef brisket comes from the chest muscles of the cow. It is found under the first five ribs.
Brisket is best described as one of the toughest cuts of meat on a cow. Since cows don’t have collarbones, the chest muscles support much of the animal’s weight.
I wrote another article that directly compares brisket and short ribs – found here. In it I explored things like cost, trimming, serving sizes, ease of smoking, etc.
The short of the article above is that brisket is:
Overall though, brisket and beef short ribs taste very similar to one another.
