Spare Ribs: spacing out the soak and the grill

Question

A specific recipe I like for preparing ribs involves a slow four hour soak at 250 degrees in the oven and then a grilling period. I was wondering, how badly is it going to affect the end result if I do the four hour soak the day before, and then placing them in the refrigerator to be grilled the next day?

Asked by Dave

Answer

This will have almost no impact (if any) provided you wrap them well using a cellophane wrap. This is also a good opportunity to apply a rub to the meat.

Answered by Cos Callis

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How do I cut and serve my ribs?

Question

I slow-cooked spare ribs on my grill yesterday:

I'm not sure if that picture does it justice, but they were very tasty.

The problem I had was cutting and serving them to my family. Is there a particular knife I should use to cut these ribs?

Also, is there a particular way I should cut them? I'm trying to avoid making a mess.

Asked by ray023

Answer

I'd personally go with a standard carving set: Very sharp non serrated long carving knife and a carving fork to help hold the meat steady without getting in-there with your hands.

Assuming you're right handed I'd start on the right with the with the ribs running up away from you, maybe slightly pointing to the left. Then cut along the bone, close to the bone so all the meat is on one side the finished cut. You should be able to get your fork one rib along the rack from where you're cutting but work out what feels best

Answered by vwiggins

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What temperature is the “warm” setting on a conventional oven?

Question

I'm making a rack of pork ribs and I want to try and cook them as low and slow as possible, with time not really being an issue. Just wondering if the warm setting is enough to do the trick. I'm cooking the ribs from frozen, with two cups of water in a covered pan and some liquid smoke.

Answer

The collagen in the ribs needs to get to a temperature of about 160 F to start breaking down into water and gelatin. If your oven can be set as low as 175 or 180 F on a normal bake or convection bake setting that is probably a better alternative unless you have access to an oven thermometer and can measure what temperature the warm setting on your oven attains.

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Is dry rub necessary in making bbq ribs?

Question

Normally when I make bbq ribs in the oven at home, I have to prepare the ribs approximately a day ahead. I usually cover the ribs with a dry rub mixture (made of garlic powder, paprika, sugar, salt, pepper, etc.), wrap it up in foil and let it sit in the fridge for about a day, lather it in bbq sauce and stick it in the oven. While this method produces quite delicious ribs, it does require a lot of effort and planning. My questions are: Is a dry rub really necessary in making bbq ribs? Is there an alternative to this dry rub? Will the ribs taste the same if I just lather them in bbq sauce and cook then straight away?

Answer

Your ribs will have a lot less flavor if you do not use a dry rub. However you can minimize some of the time (and only a bit of the flavor) by putting on the rub, wrapping in foil, and immediately putting them in the oven or on the grill. The process of putting your rub together probably takes only about 5 minutes - it's the fridge time that takes a while.

Sitting in the fridge allows some of the flavors to permeate, and if you used a more permeable material could allow your ribs to air out a bit. These are good things, but for my rib recipe I don't put the ribs in the fridge and they still taste great. I also don't put the barbecue sauce on until about the last 20 minutes of oven time, when the foil comes off and the sauce goes on. Until then the ribs stay in the foil.

I looked up North Carolina (which uses a sauce that isn't tomato based in the eastern part of the state), South Carolina (a mustard sauce), Texas, Memphis (which uses no sauce), Kansas City (tomato based-sauce that is rather sweet) - all of them used a dry rub even with wide variations on the sauce and for both beef and pork ribs.

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