I made some baby back ribs.

Michelle has been accumulating baby back ribs from our Polyface Farm orders all summer. Our original plan was to bring them to someone’s house who has a smoker but that didn’t happen so I had to learn how to do it my own damn self.

I based the rub on what I had in the spice cabinet and Mark Bittman’s, How to Cook Everything. This was my first attempt at cooking ribs so I didn’t want to mess things up with an experimental rub. I used salt, paprika, chile powder, cumin, and black pepper. Pretty basic stuff. Since I don’t have a smoker and I didn’t want to burn 4 hours of propane, the plan was to oven roast them and then finish them on the grill. I let the rub sit on the meat at room temperature for about an hour.

I was using a recipe that called for 3 hours in the oven at 275. Since I had 2 pans of ribs and a very small oven (creating a high rack-low rack situation) I swapped the pans at the 90 minute mark and turned the heat down to 250 because I was worried that I was overcooking them. I’m sure that was just silliness on my part and I don’t know that it made much of a difference. I pulled the ribs from the oven at the 3-hour mark (to make room for a chicken that we were also roasting) and I transferred them to the grill. I got the grill to hang out around 275-degrees and I kept all of the ribs away from the direct heat. They probably spent another 30 minutes on the grill. (All times are approximate due to Legend Lager consumption)

Mary put a sauce together based on Sauer’s regular BBQ sauce with mustard and Worcestershire and some ketchup that I brushed on at the last minute. I learned the trick is to let the sauce on get tacky before you try to flip the ribs, otherwise it all just runs off into the burners.

All in all, I’d say it was a successful first attempt at rib cooking. Next time I’m going to get spicier with the rub and I’m going to let it sit on meat for another hour before I start the oven roasting. The bones came right out but the meat wasn’t as falling-off-the-bone as I wanted to see it. There is room to improve and I am looking forward to getting another crack at it.