Hi! I am Gwen Schoen, food writer at the Sacramento Bee. Today we are cooking one of my favorite summer time foods and that is barbecued ribs.
When you buy ribs at the grocery store, you will find three different types. One is country style ribs which really are not true barbecued ribs that you want for barbecuing because they are more like a pork chop. They are actually cut from the loin and for barbecuing, you will find two other kinds of ribs, one is baby back the other one is spareribs. And baby back is cut from the top portion of the rib area and they are little bit leaner than regular spareribs and so you need to cook them a little differently than you would a regular sparerib.
Spareribs are cut from the lower portion which is near the bacon area so they have little more fat so they are little easier to barbecue especially if you are not accustomed to working with them because they will not dry out as much. Now when you are doing baby backs, you will wan to keep a close eye on them and make sure you do not over cook them because it is easy for them to turn out dry.
But today we are cooking spareribs which is as I said the lower portion of the rib area and when you buy spareribs, the rib would be longer than with baby backs and you will buy a big rack like this and plan to buy a pound per person and that would be true if you were doing baby backs as well because you have a lot of area, the bone area that is not edible so plan for a pound per person.
When you buy spareribs on the back side, on the bone side of the rib there is a membrane area that needs to be cut off. It actually as edible but it is very tough and so you want to remove that and you can use it if you are going to make a stock. You can add that for some flavor or you can cook it for your dog’s treat. So we are going to remove that membrane and once you have done that then the ribs will look a lot neater and they will be easier to eat plus any sauces or rubs that you put on them will soak in better.
So for these ribs, I am going to make a rub and basically, I am just going to brush them with some oil, you can use olive oil or regular vegetable oil, brush both sides and then I made a rub that is basically just dry spices and you can buy rubs already made or you can make your own. And if you make your own, the base of the rub is usually paprika and then whatever else you add to it is just based on your personal preference and I have used a mixture of some cinnamon, some chili powder, some salt, and then lots of lots of paprika. You can also add some basil or some dill, whatever flavors that you like. Also some garlic powder would be good and just sprinkle a very generous amount of your dry rub mixture over the whole surface of the ribs. I am going to cut this slab in half just to make it a little easier to handle while I am grilling, make it fit on the grill a little easier so we will find a spot between the bones and just cut through it.
And then the next step is to wrap it up in plastic wrap and then we are going to refrigerate it for about six to eight hours just so that all these spices can soak in.
Cook the ribs at medium heat and place them on the grill so they are not directly over the heat source. You can tell when the ribs are about done because the meat starts to pull away from the bone and these have been cooking for about two hours so they look absolutely perfect.
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