Tremendous Pork Ribs
Prep
20m
Cook
240m
Total
260m
Bigly says
Sit. Pour yourself a coffee. We're doing this right. Pork ribs — TREMENDOUS pork ribs, the kind that pull clean off the bone with a little tug but not so much that they FALL off the bone, because ribs that fall off the bone are overcooked, that's not barbecue, that's pot roast pretending to be ribs, and I'm not having it. Competition pitmasters know this. They call it the 'tug test' and if your ribs fail it, you don't get a trophy, you get a polite handshake and a long drive home. Sad.
I've eaten ribs in every state. Twice. I've had them in Memphis, in Kansas City, in the Carolinas, in a backyard in Wisconsin where a man in a flannel shirt with one tooth handed me a rib and changed my whole understanding of pork. I had a version in a hut in the Texas hill country — the man who made it cried when I told him they were tremendous. He cried. Big strong man, hands like baseball mitts, weeping into his pickled onions. That's the power of a good rib.
The secret is the rub and the time. The rub seasons the meat, sets the bark, builds the crust. The TIME — and this is the part the impatient never figure out — the time is what breaks down the collagen and makes the meat sing. Low and slow. LOW. AND. SLOW. If you have a smoker, use it. If you have an oven, the oven works, and anyone who tells you otherwise has never eaten a rib I made in my oven on a Tuesday in February. We finish on a hot grill or under the broiler with a slick of sauce, just enough to caramelize, never enough to drown. Saucing the rib to death is a CRIME against the rib. Period.
Ingredients
- 2 racks (about 5 lbs total)pork spare ribs (St. Louis cut)(membrane removed from the back, or you've already failed)
- 1/4 cupbrown sugar
- 2 tbspkosher salt
- 2 tbspsmoked paprika
- 1 tbspsweet paprika
- 1 tbspgarlic powder
- 1 tbsponion powder
- 1 tbspfreshly ground black pepper
- 1 tspground cumin
- 1/2 tspcayenne pepper(more if you're a real one)
- 2 tbspyellow mustard(the binder, you won't taste it, trust me)
- 1/4 cupapple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cupapple juice
- 1 cupyour favorite BBQ sauce(thinned with a splash of vinegar so it brushes on, not glops)
Steps
- 1
Preheat the oven to 275 F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with two layers of heavy-duty foil.
- 2
Flip the ribs bone-side up. Slide a butter knife under the thin silver membrane at one corner, grab it with a paper towel, and peel it off. Discard.
- 3
Pat the ribs dry. Brush both sides lightly with yellow mustard.
- 4
In a small bowl, whisk together brown sugar, kosher salt, both paprikas, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cumin, and cayenne.
- 5
Sprinkle the rub generously over both sides of the ribs and pat it in. Let sit at room temperature 15-20 minutes.
- 6
Place the ribs meat-side up on the foil-lined sheet. In a small bowl, mix the apple cider vinegar and apple juice and pour into the bottom of the sheet (not over the ribs).
- 7
Tent loosely with another sheet of foil, crimping the edges to seal. Bake 2.5 hours.
- 8
Uncover the ribs. Continue baking, uncovered, another 45-60 minutes, until a knife slides between the bones with very little resistance and the meat has pulled back from the ends of the bones.
- 9
Preheat the broiler or fire up a grill to medium-high.
- 10
Brush the ribs liberally with thinned BBQ sauce. Broil or grill 3-5 minutes per side, brushing again, until the sauce is glossy, sticky, and lightly charred in spots.
- 11
Rest the ribs 10 minutes on a cutting board, loosely tented with foil.
- 12
Slice between the bones into individual ribs and serve.
One more thing
Pickles, white bread, slaw, a cold drink — the only sides a rib needs and even those are optional. Eat with your hands. Get sauce on your face. Don't be polite about it. The rib that doesn't make a mess wasn't worth eating. Tremendous.
★ QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ONE? ★
Ask Bigly about Tremendous Pork Ribs.
Substitutions, what to serve it with, why other chefs are wrong about it. He's got opinions.
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