Using An Oven And Grill To Cook Fall-Off-The-Bone Ribs
Along with barbecued chicken, one of my favorite meals is a nice and juicy slab of ribs. I’m talking about ribs that are so juicy and tender that the meat is literally falling off the bone. Now that is one hell of a meal!
The only problems are that A) Ordering ribs in the restaurant is expensive; B) Many times I’m disappointed with the quality of the ribs in restaurants, and C) Properly cooking ribs at home has been a challenge until now.
My experience with cooking ribs has actually been extremely low. I was so inexperienced and my previous version from years ago was so bad that I practically swore off cooking ribs. Rib dinners in restaurants were reserved for very special occasions.
Recently my girlfriend found a slab of ribs on sale at the store, and she convinced me to give cooking them another shot. I reluctantly agreed, but this time it was going to be different. This time I was going to heavily research the techniques and find a way to cook the ribs correctly.
Here’s how we cooked one of the best rib dinners I’ve ever enjoyed. This technique used a dry rub, cooking the ribs in the oven and then finishing them on the grill.
The night before cooking the ribs we removed the membrane on the back of the ribs. After that the slab of ribs was divided in half, with each half being rinsed and dried. At that point it was time to add the dry rub.
One of the hardest things was selecting a dry rub to add to the ribs. What we ended up doing was getting two small packets of flavoring and using one flavor per section of ribs. In this case one section of ribs was coated in Tennessee Smokehouse BBQ rub while the other section used the Memphis Pit BBQ rub. The Tennessee rub had some spice and heat while the Memphis rub was sweeter. Once the ribs were rubbed with flavor they were wrapped in plastic wrap and placed in the refrigerator.
Here are the two sections of ribs after about eighteen hours in the fridge. We removed them about half an hour before placing them in the oven.
We’re not just going to stick the ribs into the oven and leaving them exposed to the dry heat. Instead, our technique was to place the ribs over a pan with moisture and then wrap the ribs in aluminium foil, keeping the moisture contained right there with the ribs.
I had a little fun here and used two cans of beer in the lower pan. At this point many people add liquid smoke to give the ribs a slightly smokier taste, like they’ve been cooking outside all day. My opinion is that if I’m not spending all day cooking the ribs outside, then I’m not going to cheat and artificially add that “natural” flavor. Of course, many restaurants, even high end ones, will use liquid smoke in their cooking techniques.
After pouring the liquid into the bottom of the pan it was time to place the rack and then lay the ribs on top. Remember to make sure that the ribs do NOT touch the moisture in the lower part of the pan, otherwise you’ll be parboiling instead of baking.
The next step was wrapping the ribs and baking pan with aluminium foil. You don’t need to wrap the bottom of the pan, but you’ll probably need two sheets of foil to cover everything. Remember that the heat is going to evaporate the moisture from the ribs, but the liquid along with the aluminium foil are there to help contain that moisture within the ribs.
We planned on doing a relatively slow cooking in the oven. Our oven was set at 250° F, and we baked the ribs for 2 hours. The cooking time was mainly guess work as this is our first time using this cooking technique.
After two hours the ribs were removed from the oven and checked to see if they were finished. When cooking with pork you need the finished meat to be above 155° F. Our rib meat temperature measured at 180°F in the thickest part to 195°F in the thin parts. The meat itself was incredibly tender and juicy, and pulling a bone would easily remove it from the rest of the meat. Believe me, the ribs smelled awesome!
But we’re not finished yet!
I also want to try BBQ sauce with the dry rubs. BBQ sauce is applied near the end of the cooking process and then partially cooked into the ribs. You can accomplish this using the broiler in your oven, or you could use a grill. You know which option I was going to use. 😉
As the ribs were sitting on the kitchen counter I fired up the grill and cleaned the grating. Since my propane grill is still new I had to really turn down the temperature knobs so I wouldn’t create an inferno that rivaled the surface of the sun. Once the grill was operating at a medium-to-high temperature setting it was time to add the ribs.
I wanted to taste both the dry rub and the dry rub WITH the BBQ sauce. To do this I only added BBQ to half of each section of ribs, thus creating four different flavor experiences out of that original slab of ribs.
The ribs were only on the grill for about five minutes, just long enough to cook the BBQ sauce into the ribs and also make the skin slightly crispy. Of course, the cooking time on the grill is going to vary depending on what you’re doing to the ribs. Some restaurants will cook the ribs ahead of time in the oven and then basically reheat them on the grill when the customers order them. When you do it right the end result will still be a juicy, tender and very flavorful experience.
After grilling the ribs for five minutes at 400° F, they were finished. It’s time to feast!
The finished ribs were extremely juicy, full of flavor, and the meat was literally falling off the bones. Feasting on them was a complete joy. After this experience I have full faith in cooking ribs again in the near future and trying different flavors.
In case some of you are wondering why I was drinking a quality beer with the meal and used cheap crap for the cooking, it’s because that was my last bottle of quality beer. Normally I drink the cheap stuff, so using cheap beer as part of the cooking process didn’t offend me in any way. 😉
I’m glad that we separated the ribs and used different rubs, making for an easy comparison and future flavors of ribs. The Memphis Pit BBQ was too sweet to me, but the Tennessee Smokehouse BBQ was freaking awesome, especially when combined with BBQ sauce. I’m definitely going to use that flavor again in the next batch of ribs.
In the meantime, it’s time to keep watching for the next time ribs are on sale. I definitely see more rib cooking sessions in the near future. 🙂