“Everything but the kitchen sink” Ribs

Baker Man has worked on perfecting ribs for a couple years now. I have suffered through some less than stellar ribs through this process but with the help of our neighbor, he may have them down. 

This past fall he made some killer ribs at our annual chili cook-off. He made a dry rub, let them bake submerged in water for 2 ½ hours then grilled them. They were awesome. Wonderful. And that night, 40 pounds of ribs were devoured quickly. 40 lbs!  That is insane considering all of the other food that was there.  I told him he had bought too many ribs but apparently I was wrong.  I am a little scared to see how many he buys this year! 

I didn’t think he would ever top those ribs. But he did.

I named them “Everything but the kitchen sink” Ribs because the shopping list was a little longer than I expected.  Don’t be afraid of the list of ingredients.  This is actually a pretty easy recipe, though a little time consuming. 

This time, he coated the ribs in a wet paste, baked them (without submerging them in the water), then grilled them. During the grilling, he used a vinegar/wine sauce.

The result? Spicy. Hot. Sweet. Delicious. I want more. Now.

So I suppose you want to know how to make your own? Ok, here you go.

First off, there are a lot of things that need to go into your food processor:

-4-12 scotch bonnet chilies. Now these are hot. If you don’t like hot stuff, don’t over do it. We used 5 and the ribs had a kick.
-Coarsely chopped onion. We probably used half a large onion
-Shallots – eh, about a half cup?
-2 bunches of green onions
-4 or 5 garlic cloves
-1/2 cup of fresh parsley, and ½ cup fresh cilantro
-Fresh ginger chopped, a couple tablespoons
-2 tablespoons salt – coarse
-Fresh thyme, about a tablespoon
-2 teaspoons of ground allspice
-3 tablespoons of ground black pepper
-1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
-Tablespoon of ground nutmeg
-1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
-Fresh lime juice from 4 limes
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1/4 brown sugar
-2 tablespoons soy sauce

Again, don’t be intimidated by the amount of ingredients. This is not a hard recipe and it is so worth it. This was way too much for our food processor to handle so we mixed it all into a bowl, put half of it into the food processor. Let it run, then added the rest.

The smell was amazing at this point. We put 2 racks of baby back ribs into our roasting pan and coated both sides with this paste. We let it sit for about 30 minutes to an hour. Then, we baked them for about 1 ½ hours at 300 degrees.

One quick note, the list of ingredients above made way more wet paste than we needed for 2 racks of ribs.  So, you can either make extra ribs or come up with other uses for the wet paste.  I bet it would be awesome on grilled shimp. 

A little before the ribs were ready to come out of the oven, Baker Man made a searing sauce that consisted of a cup of soy sauce, a half cup of dry red wine, 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

My nifty tip, pour all of these ingredients into a glass measuring cup and mix them there, This way, you don’t have to dirty another bowl AND, the pouring spout will come in handy later.

Get your grill going on high. Pull your ribs out of the oven and transfer them to the grill. Slowly and carefully, pour the searing sauce on the ribs. Be careful and watch out for flare ups. Baker Man did a good job on this. He cooked the ribs for about 5 minutes on both sides to finish cooking the ribs and to give them a nicely seared finish.

And 3 of us proceeded to devour the ribs. They were spectacular!

I don’t think Baker Man is done experimenting though.  He ordered some spices online tonight for his next Ribs adventure.  Stay tuned for more 🙂