Kiss Yo Mama! Country Style Pork Ribs

Early on in the cooking process, skosh more brown sugar sprinkled

I am not one to brag, but good golly miss molly, this meal this past weekend was one for the books!  I thought we had company coming, so had thawed out a large package of country style pork ribs.  I’d purchased these some months ago for a gathering and ended up taking another dish.  A large package of boneless ribs, but well priced at less than $6 for quite a bit of meat.  Well marbled meat, I might add.  I share this so you can create your own magic in the oven!

I have a recipe for ribs that has been a big hit with guests before, ending in licking the bowl, after drinking the broth.  Seems I change it up a bit each time based on what is on hand, and this was no exception.  I’ll outline the basic recipe and then mention the ingredients altered.

Typically, I have made this in the crock pot, and this dish is well worth making this way if you need to walk away from the kitchen. That being said, if you have the time and plan to be around, this oven method was far superior.  Things just don’s caramelize quite the same in a crock pot, but the broth is still dynamite, so, it is worth doing either way!

Here is the recipe as written in my kitchen notes book.  The amount of meat is not indicated, so I have always just altered the dimensions to suit my needs.  It is easy to make substitutions to these ingredients as well.  The idea, as I see it, is for sweet, salty, savory, smoky, and spicy elements to mingle and dance.

Boiling broth:

2 (12 oz) bottles of beer

2 (12 oz) cans of cola

6 crushed cloves of garlic

10 Bay leaves

2 C. sliced onion

1 c. soy sauce

1 c. salt

2 Tbsp. hot sauce

1 Tbsp. black pepper

2 Tbsp. liquid smoke

4 Tbsp. sugar

Mix all in a large sauce pot or dutch oven, and bring to a boil.  Reduce to simmer, for 10 minutes and then add ribs, and enough water to cover the ribs.  Simmer 60-90 minutes.

There is also a barbecue sauce recipe to accompany, which I have used to guide me in my own alterations of the broth.

Barbecue Sauce: 

6 oz ketchup

2 oz. chili sauce 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp. orange juice

1 Tbsp. liquid smoke

3 Tbsp. molasses

1 Tbsp. chili powder

½ small onion, diced small

Pinch of all spice

Pinch of dried crushed chilies or a sprinkle of chile flakes

Simmer 20 minutes.  Coat ribs with sauce.  Place on grill and braise for 10-20 minutes.

Now, this recipe sounds good, which is why I have kept it, but it also sounds like a pain to the cook!

I’m sure there is a reason why the ribs are boiled first and then sauced and braised, however it seems like an awful waste of delicious broth…so here is how I do it!

The first difference might be in my choice of ribs.  I prefer boneless country style ribs, which end up being tender much like the comfortable pot roast of childhood memory. Boneless ribs seem like a better value, and the only real loser is the dog.  We use the grill less often in the winter, and so the grill step would not work for much of the year.  I also intend to simmer these ribs to the point of submission and they would fall right through the grill by the time I am finished with them.

January's Ribs:

Step one, for the boneless pork or beef ribs, is to brown them.  I was working with pork ribs for this recipe by the way.  I browned them vigorously in a med. hot cast iron skillet on each side, including the fat side. No oil needed for this browning step.  The ribs make plenty of their own oil.  After which I would normally put them in the crock pot and cover with some version of the broth, but it was the weekend and the temps chilly outside, so the oven heat sounded productive and I was going nowhere.

I found a casserole dish large enough to accommodate the well browned ribs and slid them in a pre-heated 350 F. degree oven, with these items sprinkled and poured over them:  partial can of ginger ale, partial bottle of beer, soy sauce (1/4 c. or so), ¼ c. or so of pineapple juice, Worcestershire sauce, to taste. Drizzles of sriracha sauce, tamarind paste,liquid smoke, some peach jam, a rich dark molasses, a lovely teriyaki sauce, a skosh more sweetness in the form of sprinkled brown sugar. One might mix these all together in a separate bowl, but since it will simmer and bubble for so long, I just didn't see the point.

  Salt and pepper generously.  

Sliced carrots and onions were thrown in to flavor the bath. 

  Roasted garlic was added later in the cooking process, but garlic could and should be added in any form and at any time.  

I baked the ribs at this temperature until they began to boil and spit a bit, which was about 30- 45 minutes.  Heat was reduced to 300, for another hour or so, and then again later to 250.  The main goal here is to bake them low and slow until they fall apart when touched with a fork.  In this case, these thick ribs took 6-7 hours.  This might seem like a long time, but if you are at home anyway, it is no burden to peek in the oven every hour or so.  I was busy all the while with other activities, which included roasting a pumpkin which we then stuffed with some quinoa, pecans, sun dried tomatoes and parmesan.  The quest to make a perfect fried potato took over a good portion of an hour, which led to discussions aplenty on facebook and many great ideas, some of which contradict each other.  J  Since the oven was already on, I opted to bake the potatoes first, to semi firm shape, then drizzle with oil,coat in herbs,  and place in a cast iron skillet with half butter and half coconut oil.  Mitch took over the skillet at this point, but the trick seems to be to leave them be as much as possible, and not flip them constantly.  I seasoned the russet potatoes with some herbs from the garden (sage, parsley, rosemary, Cuban oregano) and generous amounts of salt and pepper.  They were mighty fine!  All in all, this was one of the best meals ever cooked in this kitchen, and one that will probably never be recreated exactly, so thank goodness for leftovers!

I wish the photos were better.   At the time I took the last few, I was really focused on digging in! The ribs were very well caramelized, to the point that they looked nearly burnt, but it was merely the brown sugar and jam that had melded in the warm oven with the darker savory elements of the broth.  Let me know how you change it to suit your needs!

 Yes!  the casserole dish did come clean!