Honey BBQ Ribs

Last week, my parents were in town, and my mom was telling me that she loves bbq'd ribs, but can't get them cooked like the restaurants. I've gotten more into cooking over the last year or 2, so I told her I would try to figure it out. I don't have a smoker or even a fancy rib cooking crockpot. I have an oven and a grill and today I gave cooking ribs a shot.

I'm a big fan of honey barbecue, so that was what I gravitated towards. I scoured the Internet using my top notch searching capability to find a recommended cooking method, a sauce recipe and suggestions for a rub. I also needed to know how to prepare the ribs prior to cooking...I would have never known to cut off the membrane on the back of the ribs without the Internet. I found a sauce recipe that I thought looked good, and most importantly didn't use alcohol. I don't like cooking with alcohol. I then looked for a cooking method, which I found from Dave Lieberman at Food Network.

At the risk of being just like another blogger I know, I'm going to duplicate what I did here so anyone (yes, you mom) can try this out. By the way, you should check out the link to that blog...looks like a really good KC BBQ recipe. I think the cooking method below is sound as the ribs turned out really good. They were juicy, cooked through and came off the bone easily. Feel free to experiment with the sauce and the rub...I think the cooking method is key and you can tailor the rest to your tastes.

Here's what I did:

Rub:
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic power
1 teaspoon onion powder
Add Black Pepper and Cayenne Pepper to taste

Note: I like a little heat so I did a fair amount of cayenne pepper. In the finished product, the heat was there but it was really subtle. This seemed to work well with the sauce.

Sauce:
1 cup honey
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup white distilled vinegar
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Note: Again, because I like heat, I added extra cumin and black pepper.

Note: The soy sauce flavor did come through. I liked it, but if you are not a fan of soy sauce, use less, or try a different recipe.

Note: I only did 1 rack of ribs since my family is away. The sauce and rub were about right for 1 rack, though I was pretty liberal with the sauce. You could probably get 2 racks of ribs if you went more sparingly with the sauce.

To prepare the ribs (I used baby back):
-Add rub, somewhat liberally, and place the ribs in a 9x13 baking dish.
-Add sauce to the ribs and let them marinate for 10-12 hours. I used about 1/2 the sauce for this.
-Remove ribs from the fridge 30 mins prior to cooking.
-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
-Place ribs in the baking dish covered with tin foil on the center rack and let them cook for 90 minutes to 2 hours. I did 90 minutes...might have gone a little longer with more ribs.
-After the oven cooking is done, transfer the ribs to preheated grill. The grill should be at medium heat.
-Place the ribs meat side down and cook for 3-5 minutes to get them crispy. Be careful if you use a honey barbecue sauce...the sugar will burn. Brush on the sauce as you grill.
-Flip the ribs and cook for another 3-5 minutes on the grill. Continue to brush on the sauce.
-Remove from the grill and enjoy. Use the remainder of the sauce for dipping if you feel so moved.

That's what I did. The ribs turned out really good. Sadly I didn't have anyone else to confirm this because my family is out of town and my neighbors weren't home. So, if you try this and you don't like them, I guess I'm just crazy. Enjoy!