In light of the fact that I was able to fully enjoy a three-day holiday weekend and Sarah was, shall we say, not so lucky, I was bestowed the responsibility of producing a fine family meal for dinner on Monday. Adding to the challenge, Sarah requested I prepare a couple of pounds of country-style pork ribs she purchased several weeks ago and stored in the freezer.
I’ve never prepared country-style ribs before. In fact, I can only think of two times previously I’ve every prepared ribs of any kind. So, I needed to find a recipe. I learned that country-style ribs, which aren’t really ribs at all, are marbleized such that slow cooking is the ideal preparation to render tender results. I settled on starting with a recipe for BBQ Country Style Ribs I found on www.allrecipes.com. But, that wasn’t enough for me. I had to go and read the comments and learn more from others’ experience. The original recipe calls for cooking the ribs for two hours uncovered with lemon slices on top. It seemed the folks that were happiest with the recipe raised the temperature, sealed them in foil, and added a little water. If I remember my Alton Brown training correctly, I believe this changes the process from baking to braising. I liked that, so I ran with it.
BBQ COUNTRY STYLE RIBS
Ingredients:
4 Country-style pork ribs
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 lemons, thinly sliced
Barbeque sauce
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.2. Line a shallow baking pan with aluminum foil up and around the edge of the pan to keep water contained. Place the ribs in the pan.
3. Spread minced garlic over the ribs. I used the minced garlic you can buy in a jar at the grocery store.
4. Cover the ribs with the lemon slices.
5. Pour about 1/16 of an inch of water in the pan.
6. Cover with aluminum foil and seal tightly to hold in the steam as the ribs braise.
7. Bake for two hours.
8. Remove from the oven and remove the foil cover, carefully, to avoid getting burned by the trapped steam.
10. Coat the ribs, liberally, on all sides with your preferred barbeque sauce.
11. Reseal the ribs in foil.
12. Bake at 275 degrees F for forty minutes.
After the second bake, I put the ribs back in the oven with the broiler on in an attempt to carmelize the barbeque sauce to give it a little crispiness and better presentation. It didn’t work. Instead, it made them look dry. So, I flipped them over before I served. I’d recommend skipping the broiling.
I served the ribs with a wedge salad with chopped bacon and blue cheese dressing for me and chipotle ranch dressing for Sarah.
The ribs were absolutely delicious. It takes a while to cook them, but the actual time put into preparation is no more than 15 minutes. Plus, country-style ribs are super cheap. With the low prep-time, low cost, and excellent results, I’ll definitely be serving these again. I think they’ll scale up well to large groups. So, the next time we host a potluck, I think we have our meal.
I've had good luck with ribs (should apply to these too) by slow cooking in the crockpot for a while (5-6 hours on high or 8-10 on low) with whatever sauce or rub you want and then finishing with high heat on the BBQ to get some smokey flavor and caramelize some of the sugar.
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