For our 4th of July BBQ, I made Texas Pork Ribs. The recipe can be found @All Recipes.
Lessons Learned:
- Wear gloves – Having never made ribs before, I didn’t know that applying the rub was such a dirty job. The mixture of pork fat, salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper and sweat gets all over the place.
- Dry rubbing – When I think ribs, I think wet and saucy. The rub is instead dry, the majority of which is sugar with paprika for that unmistakable BBQ red. It was an interesting experience as we kept wondering whether all the rub we kept piling on was necessary.
- Bake at least 4 hours and baste with the ribs with BBQ sauce more often
- Charcoal bbqing is a pita when it’s 90 degrees outside and the dog won’t leave the grill alone. The temperature is also really difficult to get right. I attempted adding wood chips but that just made the grill explode. Propane grill for the win next time.
- The BBQ sauce in the recipe was too sweet so we fusion-ed it up by adding soy sauce to balance out all the sugar the recipe called for
- Use a bigger basting brush to really lather on the BBQ sauce
My own humble opinion is that the ribs were just OK by themselves and so much better with the sauce (the ribs that were not burnt). Even the worlds toughest critic, PY, said that sauce was good, but then again, that could have just been him applying his trademark sarcasm. I didn’t get any pics of the ribs, but I do have a tantalizing shot of the leftover BBQ sauce. Yay!
