A Simple Rib Recipe

Tonight I discovered something.

All those recipes for making ribs, especially BBQ'd ones, that emphasized;

- Complex spice mixtures & marinades;
- Hours of low heat to make meat tender;

It was ALL A LIE!!!

All those baroque preparations involving exotic multi-colored sauces with secret spice recipes, the debates about various types of fuel (mesquite vs. gas), the enormous smokers, none of that is necessary unless you are insistent on (to paraphrase Anthony Bourdain) forcing the meat into submission.

I made a pork ribs this evening for dinner. It was a VERY simple recipe that I threw together. But it turned out to be the most tender batch of ribs I ever made, and far quicker than all my previous attempts. The basics were as follows;

Half a rack of Niman Ranch pork spareribs
Two cloves of garlic
A handful of fresh sage
Salt & pepper to taste

I rubbed the garlic and sage all over the ribs. Sprinkled salt and pepper on them. Plopped into the broiler just long enough to brown both sides, switched onto oven mode, and roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

BUT, I DID ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING, I wrapped the rack of ribs in tinfoil before putting them back into the oven. The meat already had the searing from the broiling, from here I wanted to wrap them in foil and sweat the meat.

A half hour later, I pulled them out of the oven. The results are below.

From Storehouse

From Storehouse

In the picture above you see a rib furthest to the right where the bone is sticking out more than the others. My hand accidently bumped into it, knocking the bone off the meat. After only at most 45 minutes of cooking the meat was falling off the bone.

It might have just been because I used high quality pork, but the ribs needed very little spicing up. Sage, garlic, salt, and pepper, was all these ribs needed. Smothering it into a reddish sweet/sour/salty/spicy mixture for several hours, or even just for the 30 minutes it was sitting in the oven, would have done nothing to improve them.

I wrote months back that Texas BBQ was overrated. After tonight I think ALL AMERICAN BBQ is over-rated. What BBQ preparations do to meat is excessive and unnecessary. It's like taking Ingrid Bergman and making her get a boob job, liposuction, and botox. If the meat is good to begin with, there is no need to smother it.