Wednesday, March 3, 2010

OUR LITTLE 6 POUNDS, 8 OUNCES OF JOY

The realization shocks and apalls me, but, until this past Saturday, I had never even tried to make legitimate ribs in my entire life. Wow. Well, that all changed when we invited my parents over for dinner. We knew we wanted to barbecue something, but when my wife came home from costco with a giant pack of the meatiest baby back ribs I've ever seen, I knew that our ribless little lives had just changed forever...

I chose a three part recipe... rub, mop, and sauce. The rub was mostly new mexico chile powder, salt, paprika, and granulated garlic. The mop was a mixture of melted butter, apple juice, cider vinegar, and barbecue sauce, and the barbecue sauce was made with ketchup, apple juice, vinegar, molasses, and a whole bunch of spices (mostly chile powder and gralic). The part of this whole process that I am most proud of is my improvised rib rack, made by attaching bolts covered in foil to the cooking grate on my weber.
Here are the ribs covered in rub:
And the Mop and Sauce:

Here is a picture of the ribs after smoking over hickory at about 200 degrees for one hour. You can see my sweet new rib rack, and if you look closely, you can see the coal setup... just 15 or so coals, set way off to one side, with a handful of wet woodchips (not scattered, but set down in a heap on top of the coals so that they smolder slowly)... I used two large handfuls throughout the cooking process.... 
And here are our finished little babies after 4 and a half hours in the barbecue.... sooo tasty.......
Here they are again, all cut up and ready for battle. Not a great picture, but you can kind of see the pink smoke ring on them if you look carefully....

These things came out really, really well... but, as always, I need to make a few changes next time:
1) Start the ribs first thing in the morning, and reheat them with the barbecue sauce over hot coals when its time to eat them. They were not at all tough, but they just weren't quite falling off the bone, and I would have liked to cook them longer, but it was time to eat....
2) I thought the ribs were burning because a few spots were looking black, but they were nowhere near overcooked.... A little black is totally fine, as long as it isn't looking like charcoal (especially at the bone tips)....
3) More spicy! The new mexico chile powder really has no kick, even though it was advertised as being between cayenne and paprika. No heat at all, which made me sad inside.
4) Try a milder wood like cherry or pecan. I liked the hickory, but it was much stronger the next day... not a bad thing, but I think a more subtle, slightly sweeter smoke flavor would be a little better...
5) Double the barbecue sauce recipe, and reduce half of it down so that it is thick and goopy. Use the normal, unreduced half to coat the ribs on the grill, and serve up the thickened half on the table for dipping and/or slathering.


No comments: