Stick your Ribs together!

Okay, so those of you that have been following Lea's food blog over at http://copperpots.blogspot.com will have already seen my last batch of ribs and a desire to improve upon them the next time. Well this is the next time and they are GOOD! Read down to the bottom to see what I did differently!

To re-iterate Lea's post, here's the guts of it all:

"First, he asked me to make a rub for them... I'd never made a rub before so I jumped online a combined a few different ones I found depending on what we had in stock. We were short chili powder so it did prove to be a challenge... but in the end I wound up using: dry mustard (I used dry English mustard), paprika, cayenne, parsley, black pepper, Mrs. dash, and salt. We let them sit with the rub in the fridge for about 3 hours...

From here Dave completely took over. First he boiled them in 3 bottles of dark beer (his own brew!)and some water for an hour....















Here they are fresh out of the pot, rub still intact...















Then to the grill they went to cook for another hour... occasionally basting with some BBQ sauce. Unfortunately it was getting late at this point, and here we can see Dave basting in the almost-dark:















They turned out delish, with a bit of a bite from the rub."

Okay, so what did I do different? Well my main criticism over the last batch was they were a little of the chewy side. I'm used to working with baby backs and these were spare ribs of the larger, meatier with more connective tissue variety. Therefore it stands to reason that larger ribs take longer to tenderize! So this time using the same rub, and the same boil in beer method as before I let them soak a while longer, a little over a hour to be exact. Then it was out to the grill..........A little less heat and a few more turns to make sure of an even cooking.

As before I used the Jack Daniels baste to sweeten up the affair and complement the slightly spicey bite provided by the rub.

I have to say this time they were a LOT better but all said and done I think I prefer baby back ribs!

Until next time, eat well!