Fall-off-the-bone-tender Baby Back Ribs

(Picture found along with a totally different recipe, here)

Ted found a recipe for homemade barbecue sauce on foodnetwork.com, and decided to try it with chicken on the grill. Um, it was amazing. Truthfully, I think it was the best barbecue chicken I’ve ever had. We’ll definitely be making more of this sauce. He got the recipe from Giada, here.

Balsamic BBQ sauce

• 1 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan and stir until all the ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is smooth. Simmer over medium heat until reduced by 1/3, about 15 to 20 minutes.

It was so delicious, I wanted to save the extra sauce to use again. But then, I didn’t want to make chicken again, since we had just had it, so a week later I went looking for a baby back rib recipe, one that I could make in the oven. I came across this really simple recipe, and then I went into the comments and saw that while people said the ribs were tender and wonderful, the sauce got pretty watery, so it was even better if you used a dry rub instead of the sauce, until the last 15 or 20 minutes. They also suggested broiling for a few minutes at the end, to crisp the skin a bit, and keep it from being flabby. I liked that idea, so I gave it a try. I haven’t tried it with sauce instead of dry rub, but um, the dry rub was YUMMY.

Dry Rub for Ribs

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tbsp black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 – 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Combine all ingredients and use as a dry rub for ribs.

Next, take the sauce recipe, the rib recipe, and the dry rub recipe, and put them together to get magically delicious results.

Amazing and Tender Baby Back Ribs

• 2 pounds pork baby back ribs
• dry rub mixture
• barbecue sauce

1. Tear off 4 pieces of aluminum foil big enough to enclose each portion of ribs. Spray each piece of foil with vegetable cooking spray. Rub the ribs liberally with dry rub mixture, and place each portion in its own piece of foil. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
3. Bake ribs wrapped tightly in the foil at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for 2 1/2 hours. Remove from foil.
4. Brush ribs liberally with barbecue sauce, then broil until crispy and delicious.

Wow. If you like ribs at all, give this one a try. I’m the rib fan around here. Ted and Maya like them OK, but they lurved this recipe. Definitely a keeper.