In the pantheon of pork, if bacon is king, then the prince of pork is the humble rib. Ribs have an incredibly delicious fat to meat ratio that is supplemented by the infusion of marrowy succulence from the bones.
To really enjoy the rib experience you need a little bit of crisp on the outside, some tangy smoky flavor and a lot of tender fall-off-the-bone, melt-in-your-mouth pork.
This recipe does not use a smoker, which may seem like sacrilege to the hardcore bbqers out there, but you really don’t need any specialist equipment to make ribs at home that the whole family will love.
bbq pork ribs
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 1 rack of back ribs
- 1 bottle of good quality bbq sauce i.e. no high fructose corn syrup
Rub
- 1 tbsp. of paprika
- 1 tbsp. cumin
- 1 tbsp. of brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp mustard powder
Instructions
- Mix together the rub ingredients.
- Check to see if there is a membrane on the back of your ribs. If there is peel it off. I usually use a butter knife to get under the edge of the membrane. Once you get a good grip, which can be difficult as it is slippery, tear it off. If you can't see or grab the membrane, no worries, removing it does not make a huge difference.
- Cut the rack into thirds. I find that managing third racks is a lot easier on the bbq.
- Apply the rub to each third rack then wrap each third rack with heavy duty foil. Heavy duty foil is a little more expensive than regular, but it is worth it as the ribs don't rip it quite so easily. You can leave your ribs in the rub for an hour or so or start cooking right away.
- Preheat your oven to 300 F, we are going to cook our ribs low and slow. Sealing them in the foil makes the ribs stay tender as they cook in their juices.
- Put your foil wrapped ribs on a baking tray and pop the tray in the oven for two and a half hours.
- When there is about 15-30 minutes left light your bbq and get it nice and hot. Always oil the bbq grill or you will end up sacrificing strips of delightfully spiced rib meat to the fire gods.
- Remove your ribs from the oven and the foil, we are going to crisp them up a bit on the bbq. Be gentle as they will be fall off the bone tender by this point in time.
- Put the ribs on the grill bone side down and liberally brush the top with bbq sauce, then flip them over. As the bbq sauce is caramelizing on the meat side of the ribs, spread bbq sauce on the bone side of the ribs.
- After a couple of minutes you should have some cool grill marks on the meat side of your ribs and the sauce should be bubbly and sticky, when this happens flip them over again to caramelize the sauce on the bone side.
- If you want you can keep lacquering each side of the ribs, but I usually only apply the sauce once.
- Remove your sticky, fall off the bone delicious ribs from the bbq and enjoy.
- If you have any left overs you can strip the meat from the bones add some additional bbq sauce and you will have some killer pulled pork.