If you follow my cooking long enough, you’ll figure out that what I cook tends to follow closely with whatever is on sale at the store – I consider my cooking style to be “Foodie Frugal”. This recipe is no different. We were going to have some friends over, and baby back ribs were on sale. I’ve never cooked ribs before, so I thought I’d give it a go. My goal was to make smokey, slightly spicy ribs, with a rich brown sugar crust – so tasty they wouldn’t need any BBQ sauce.  This is what I came up with, please enjoy!

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Five Pepper Baby Back Ribs

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

• 4 lbs. Baby Back Ribs
• 2 Fresh Jalapenos
• Spice Rub (see below)
• 4 tablespoons Bourbon (one tablespoon per rack of ribs)

Directions:

1. Prep 4 sheets of aluminum foil (one per rack), roughly 18″-24″ long. Turn up the edges to hold the bourbon.
2. Pour a tablespoon (roughly, accuracy here isn’t critical!) of bourbon on each foil pan.
3. Pre-heat oven to 275 degrees
4. Remove the pith and seeds of the jalapenos, and cut into one inch squares
5. Remove tough membrane on the underside of the ribs (I used paper towels to help pull it)
6. Cut each rack of ribs in half, which makes it easier to wrap them up
7. Rub the inside of the jalapeno slices over all of the meat and bones
8. Place a few of the used jalapeno slices on each foil pan
9. Rub the spice rub on all of the meat, really pressing the rub into the meat
10. Place two half racks of ribs on each foil pan, bone ends touching, trying to keep the width as even as possible.
11. Pour any remaining rub on the tops of the ribs
12. Seal the foil packets, and place in a baking pan (I lined our pan, because I hate scrubbing pans!)
13. Bake at 275 degrees for 3.5 hours
14. Bask in the incredible aroma. Open the windows and torture your neighbors.
15. Remove ribs and let them rest, leaving the foil packets sealed.
16. At this point, you could refrigerate them, and finish them on the grill in another day or two, if you wanted.
17. Heat grill to a medium high heat
18. Sear ribs over medium high heat for 7-10 minutes per side. The ribs are fully cooked already, so the goal is simply to infuse some smoke flavor, and give the rub and meat a good crust
19. Enjoy!

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Spice Rub

Ingredients:

You’ll find I tend to go by feel on seasonings, so these measurements are all approximate – adjust as you see fit!

• 1/3 cup Kosher Salt
• 1 teaspoon fine ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika (I *love* this seasoning!)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground sage
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar (I used some muscovado, only because it was handy)

Mix all seasonings together. I use a sandwich bag, as you’ll see in the pictures.

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Final Verdict:

Flavor:

As I mentioned in my apology entry, the rub was too salty for my taste. If you love salt, those proportions might be right for you. I don’t care for much salt, so to me, the salt here overpowered most of the seasonings. When I do these next, I’ll be cutting way back on the salt, probably 2 tablespoons, and leave everything else roughly the same. The meat was actually spicy all by itself, presumably because of the jalapeno rub, and I really enjoyed that aspect. Overall, I achieved my goal of well seasoned ribs that didn’t need sauce. Not bad for a first try!

Aroma:

Heavenly. Unbelievable. Ridiculous.

I don’t use words like that to describe much of what I do in this life, but they are justified. The combination of spice, brown sugar, and bourbon, for 3+ hours, was intoxicating. I ran to the store while they were baking, and when I got home, I was in awe. I’d do the ribs again this way, just to have the house smell like that again!

Texture:

Ridiculously tender. Literally fell off the bones cleanly. A little dried out, and next time I will probably do a few minutes less on the grill. But for me, who *hates* eating meat on bones because I get food in my beard, these ribs were *PERFECT*. Low and slow in the oven was definitely the right approach here.

Overall:

Not perfect, but very very good. Definitely worth doing again, with a few minor tweaks.

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Let me know how these turn out for you!