FALL-OFF-THE-BONE BABY BACK RIBS

Jun 29

Perfect ribs are the ones that fall off the bone easily but don’t fall apart when handled. This is easier to achieve than you think and if you have never tried it, I can only recommend following this recipe for an absolutely delicious experience. To achieve the perfect consistency, the ribs are pre-baked in the oven but after that, you can close your kitchen and enjoy the outdoor experience of grilling.

Way back in the beginning of my marriage, I used to think that grilling should be a job for my husband, thinking that handling charcoal, fire, and gas would be easy for someone that bragged about his years as a Boy Scout in Germany. Unfortunately, my husband was not much of a cook and standing next to the barbecue waiting for the perfect time to turn over or remove precious grilled goods was rather tricky when he was easily distracted by other activities such as cleaning the garage or weeding the garden to name a few. We went through endless rounds of what he called New Orleans-style “blackened” meat and once even a grill in flames until he finally came to understand that waiting next to the grill was a most important task in grilling. After 20+ years of marriage, I finally learned that you can’t make everybody into a gourmet griller or expect specific tasks from either side and that if I wanted my husband to do the task, I needed to let him find his own way of grilling. He, on the other hand, learned to be more patient in order to produce grilled goods that would reach our plates as perfected delicacies rather than charred remains! And they lived happily ever after…The end!

The good thing about these ribs is that they are pre-cooked and don’t take long on the barbecue. All you need to do is turn them around a couple of times until they achieve a nice crispy surface, then brush them with barbecue sauce that settles to a perfect sticky coat in the heat. Not much waiting time involved. Yay!

INGREDIENTS
1 rack of baby back ribs per person
homemade dry rub
2 cups water
BBQ sauce (I use Steve’s Paleogoods Paleochef Peach BBQ)

INSTRUCTIONS
Coat both sides of the ribs generously with dry rub.

Place the ribs on a rimmed baking sheet. With more ribs, you can stack them a little. Add two cups of water to the bottom of the pan. Seal the baking sheet tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake at 300° F for two hours (3 hours for spare ribs). Use a fork to see if the meat separates from the bone. Remove from the oven and let cool. Wrap the ribs in aluminum foil and refrigerate if you do not plan on grilling them right away.

Unwrap the ribs and place them on the preheated grill (Usually I do this with half racks so they are easier to handle and don’t break apart). Barbecue each side for 5 minutes.

Brush both sides with barbecue sauce and keep barbecuing until the meat is browned and crispy at the surface.

Serve with extra barbecue sauce and American classic homemade coleslaw. (recipe below)