Here’s a little something something that you all might enjoy – especially if you enjoy delicious, moist, fall off the bone pork spare ribs. It’s a pretty simple recipe that you can do in the oven. Now, I happen to live in NYC and fortunately, I live in a great apartment with a great kitchen and an oven that I use regularly to bake bread, make pizza, roast vegetables and make ribs. But more fortunately, our apartment has access to rooftop deck – a precious commodity in NYC, which we share with our friendly neighbors – that came with a full sized WEBER GRILL! I’m talking rooftop bbqs! Yeah, boyeeee…. uh, and girrrrl! So, if you can do these ribs on an outside grill using mesquite charcoal, I highly recommmend it because that delicious smoky flavor is something you can’t get in the oven – unless you have some sort of grease fire and that’s not the smokey flavor you want.
Alright so here’s what you need for the ribs:
1. A rack of pork spareribs (one rack will be about 1.5 to 2 lbs)
For western style ribs – as opposed to Asian style where I might use a wet marinade – I use a dry rub which I apply to the ribs at least a few hours before I grill them. In the case of the video, as you’ll see I dry rubbed the ribs a couple days before so they were pretty salty because the meat soaked up so much of the rub. Don’t worry they were still delicious. But just be aware, the longer the ribs sit with dry rub on them, the more they’ll soak up the flavor of the rub.
Here are the ingredients for the dry rub (as usual these are approximate amounts – vary it up or add spices as you see fit. I usually don’t even measure):
2 Tbspns of sea salt
1 Tbspn of brown sugar
1/2 tspn of cumin
1/8 tspn cayenne pepper
1/2 tspn of dried oregano
black pepper to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
Sprinkle the dry rub liberally over the rack of ribs and pat it down so the dry rub sticks. Put the ribs in the fridge and let them sit for a few hours before you grill them. Now here’s the good part. Check out the video below for how to cook them:
If you didn’t catch it, or if you’re too lazy to rewind the video, here’s the recipe for the bbq sauce (again amounts are approximates):
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 tsp of Sriracha
1 1/2 Tbspn of Worcsestershire sauce
1 – 1 1/2 Tbspn of honey
1 1/2 tsp of white or cider vinegar
1 tspn of soy sauce
* whatever pork juice you can get from the ribs after they’ve been slow cooked.
And if you are doing these ribs in the oven, it’s really simple. Just follow the same principles as you would using the outside grill:
1. Direct heat – use your broiler and sear the ribs a couple minutes on each side till they’re browned.
2. Slow cooking – cover the ribs with foil and bake in your oven at about 225 to 250 degrees for a couple hours.
3. Direct heat – finish the ribs with sauce again under the broiler to rebrown them and get them a little charred.
4. Devour
