Adventures in ribs.

Thanks to Ray's Food Place, I finally got the opportunity to actually experiment with a real cut for barbecue: beef spare ribs. They were running some kind of sale, two racks of spare ribs, bagged up, and sold for about a buck a pound. We were in a bit of a hurry, and needed something to pick up for dinner, and they caught my eye.

Thanks to their cheapness, I actually got two goes at making ribs, once the first night, and again on my brother's birthday the next night, a suggestion of my mother's as a substitute for the pizza they had planned to order.

This proved to be good, because I rather botched the first batch, on two fronts, mainly due to my own ignorance. The first mistake turned out to be in the butchering, namely, that I didn't realize any was required. The back side of the ribs has an outer membrane that is completely inedible, cooking up into a tough layer of unchewable gristle. The second was that I cooked the ribs for about half as long as they needed to be, mainly because I was impatient, but also out of a certain ignorance as to what a good cooked rib is supposed to look like.

The part I did hit just right though, was in the seasoning. My initial plan had been to go with a dry rub only, and serve the sauce either on the ribs afterwards, or even on the side. So I went about building a spice mixture, on the fly, of salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and chili powder. But then I hemmed a bit, concerned my ribs were going to be too dry, and decided to baste on a fair amount of cheap hickory BBQ sauce anyway. The end result wound up being the best tasting part of the whole thing.

Now, for cooking method, my original plan had been charcoal grill, but it turned out the only grill I had was so small that not even one of the racks of ribs would fit. So I had to go with the oven. The first time around, I cooked them at 350 for 45 minutes, which was way too underdone. The meat was rare, and to safe temp and everything, but not a texture you want for ribs. So for the next night, I cooked it at 325, for a good hour and a half or so.

The second batch was, of course, much, much better, and in fact, downright delicious. The texture was great, the flavor of the meat and the combination between the sweet sauce and the slightly spicy dry rub was perfect.

I want to make more. Maybe experiment some more with actually making my own sauce. And maybe refurbishing the bigger grill I found in the backyard. Or maybe trying to replicate the Army surplus Swiss box smoker Alton Brown demonstrated at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival.

I really want to experiment with smoked meat and things, but have so far lacked the equipment. With some money coming in, perhaps I can do a little Alton-esque improvisation of my own and make a nice smokebox.

Of course, the money is proving to be an issue still, because now my damn employer won't give me my check. I was supposed to meet my boss at the restaurant at 1 PM yesterday, and instead spent all day sitting around waiting for him to call, which so far, now 36 hours later, has yet to happen, and my own attempts to call there have all somehow missed him. This, plus some of the other behaviors and things hinted at, are making me exceedingly doubtful about my job security, and it seems I am again in the market for another cooking job.