October is National Pork Month, and the timing is something we simply love.

Pork is a cold-weather love language. It is the smoker running all Saturday on the cool porch while you can hear the game playing just out of sight in the house.

Fall is the pulled pork that feeds a house full of family, the brats that turn a parking lot into a party. Fall was built for appreciation of the pig.

And at every fall gathering, one thing really should land on the table first: ribs.

THE RIBS

Serious Eats just dropped a smoked pork rib recipe you don’t want to miss.

This piece of meaty artwork is a Great Plains spin on Kansas City barbecue: St. Louis-cut spareribs, a simple brown-sugar-and-paprika rub, and a long, low smoke around 225 degrees.

Three hours on the grate, a wrap (if you believe in that sort of thing), then three coats of sauce brushed on until they glaze. Patience, mostly.

The kind fall finally gives you time for…

But this whole sentiment is not just about the pork…

THE SAUCE IS THE SOUL

Here is the part that got us absolutely hooked. Instead of the usual ketchup base, this sauce is built on the American wild plum.

Writer Jed Portman leans on a “local barbecue” idea borrowed from chef Michael Symon: local meat, local wood, local ingredients.

His local jewel is the sandhill plum, Kansas’s state fruit, one of a dozen-plus American plums that grow across 43 states and run smaller and more sour than anything at the grocery store.

Simmered down and passed through a food mill, those plums become a tangy, jammy glaze. As Portman puts it, pork and fruit is a pairing older than American barbecue itself.

Now if that doesn’t make you feel romantic about plums, nothing will.

PLUM-LESS OPTIONS

Can’t convince you to love plums? Okay fine…

Then maybe you need to top this month’s ribs with a sweet & spicy BBQ sauce from Southern Living… (no plums involved).

This is a modern retelling on an old classic, but you know what really gets us?

It’s not cheap sauce from the store. Either way you sauce up those ribs, you’re pushing yourself to do something better.

Be better than the Sweet Baby Ray’s…

Clearly, this is the month, and this is the weather, to slow down and cook something with your hands.

Fire up the smoker, find a meat (and maybe a fruit) that grows near you, and feed the people you love.

That is the whole point.