Saturday, February 28, 2009

How to Make a Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce

Kansas City Style Barbeque Sauce is known for it's sweet, sticky, ketchupy flavor. It is much sweeter than a sauce native to the south. If you like a good, thick, sweet sauce then a Kansas City variety is a sure bet. Sauce is one of the things that I must confess, I'm not the best at. I have made sauces but nothing that I would consider to be award winning. I am still looking for a prize winning sauce recipe.

Kansas City Style Barbeque Rib Rub

What makes Kansas City Style Barbeque unique is the sauce. This regional style is all about the sauce which is much tangier and sweeter than the spicier sauce of the Southwest or the more bitter style of the Northeast. This weekend I had a taste for some "sweet meat" so I thought I'd try my hand at a KC style. As always, I prefer to rub my ribs down the day before I grill them so here is the recipe for a good, basic sweet rub:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup paprika
1 tablespoon of black pepper
1 tablespoon of salt
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1 tablespoon of garlic powder

Rinse the ribs and trim away the excess fat. You can also pull the membrane (a thin layer of skin on the bone side of the slab) at this time. Rub the ribs down and wrap them tight in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge overnight. If time is of the essence, you can rub them and put them on the grill right away but I prefer to let those seasonings get into the meat over time.

Since a major component of the sweet rub is brown sugar, you have to cook it "slow and low" because the sugar will blacken very quickly. To fight this, I'll make a mist to spray over them throughout the cooking time. Mix a half cup of water with a half cup of pineapple or apple juice. You'll want to mist the ribs at least once an hour while cooking them. This will keep them good and moist and will help keep the sugar from burning so quickly.

Kansas City Style Barbeque Sauce

1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup beer
1/4 cup vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 clove of minced garlic
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt

Brown the garlic in the olive oil and then mix in the remainder of the ingredients. Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. This will make a sweet, ketchup based sauce so you may want to add the ingredients in smaller increments so you can adjust them to taste.

On cooking day, preheat your grill to 180 - 200 degrees. Place the ribs on the grill meat side up and let 'em smoke. Remember to keep an eye on your temperature because the sugar will burn quickly if your fire gets too hot. The ribs are going to smoke for about 5-6 hours but mist them with your water/juice mixture once every hour to hour and a half or so. Mop the ribs with your Kansas City Sauce over the last hour before you pull them off the grill. When the meat starts to shrink and pull away from the bones they're getting done.

Remember, the key to good Kansas City Style ribs is the sweetness and the sauce. That's also the most challenging part of cooking them. Make sure to keep the fire low and cook them slow!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Emergency Barbeque Rib Recipe

Emergency Barbeque Rib Recipe


The emergency barbeque rib recipe is for...emergencies. My wife asked me late Saturday morning at what time I planned to put the ribs on. "Put the ribs on??? What the hell are you talking about put the ribs on???" "I hadn't planned on smoking ribs today!" You see, my wife was hosting a wedding shower for her cousin. I knew about the shower, but I had no idea that she had volunteered my bbq expertise. It was about 10am and I didn't even have any ribs. The shower was scheduled to begin at 5pm.

If you recall my last post, you'll remember that barbequing ribs is a two day process. To have ribs done for a Saturday shower, I would have needed to rub the ribs down on Friday. What was I supposed to do? Buy ribs from a barbeque restaurant? I'd rather buy crack. Considering that I would need to go to the store and get some ribs, I had about 4 hours to go from zero to lip smackin' good. It's a good thing I'm a rib master.

If you ever find yourself in an emergency situation like this, read on.

Start with the ribs for beginners rub and DON'T ADD THE BROWN SUGAR. The sugar will cause the ribs to blacken quickly at the temperature we'll be cooking at. Instead of spare ribs, I went with the back ribs which are cut from a more tender area of the cow. I needed to go with a more tender cut because I was going to be cooking these ribs much hotter than I normally would. Also, rather than mist the ribs as they cooked, I was going to mop them. The mop would really help to keep them from getting too tough as I speed cooked them.

Baby Back Rib Mop Recipe

1 cup apple cider (not vinegar)
3 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
4 teaspoons of kentucky bourbon

Melt the butter in a sauce pan and then add the soy sauce, cider, and the bourbon. Start your fire and we're going to take it up to about 280 to 300 degrees. When your grill is heated, add the ribs meat side up. Normally we let ribs cook without bothering them, but we're going to mop them with our mop sauce after the first 45 minutes and then once an hour. We need to keep them well lubricated so they don't dry out at the high cooking temperature.
When the meat shrinks back from the bone, those bad boys should be done.

This is the exact recipe that I followed Saturday. Let me say this: those babies turned out awesome. I didn't think the flavor would be as good because I wound up only cooking them for about 3 and half hours. The pink smoke ring wasn't as pronounced as I would have liked but the mopping kept them juicy and that bourbon just set the flavor off beautifully. Next time, I may use this bourbon mop and smoke them properly.

If you have a recipe for a good barbeque rib recipe, please email it to me; I'm getting hungry!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Barbeque-rib-recipes

Barbeque Rib Recipes For Beginners


Barbeque rib recipes for beginners is something of a misnomer. I have to tell you. Cooking meat on a grill is not easy. Notice I said "cooking meat on a grill" and not "barbequing", or "smoking", or "grilling". Barbequing, smoking, and grilling meats are all different methods of preparing what is generally known as "barbeque".

I am a barbeque NUT. I could eat brisket, pork shoulder, fish, or chicken off the grill morning, noon, and night. Good barbeque rivals the best food on earth. The smoky, savory goodness is unrivaled when it's done correctly but that is the key: doing it correctly.

It is very difficult to get legitimately good meat off of a grill. It takes knowledge, consistency, discipline, and patience. Many people pull out the grill once or twice a summer, put some fuel in it, throw on some meat and call them selves barbequing. HA! Surely you jest!

Barbeque Ribs: The Calculus of Meats

Ok, so you've grilled a few burgers and hotdogs. Maybe you even cooked a steak in your backyard. Now you feel like you've advanced to ribs. Make no mistake, ribs are probably one of the most difficult meats to barbeque but in my opinion, there is NOTHING better to eat. The spare rib (not the babyback) is the quintessential barbeque staple. It's what people think of when they think of barbeque. Because there is so little meat on them, relative to something like a pork shoulder, there is much less room for error. It is very easy to screw up a rack of ribs and I will explain a few of the more common methods.

Boiling

This is the number 1 rib foul. Correction. Boiling ribs is a felony. Don't do it. A nationally well known barbeque chain went bankrupt and out of business because they were caught boiling ribs. They were lucky, if I were King, boiling ribs would be a crime punishable by stoning.

Broiling

Cooking ribs over direct heat, or worse yet, an open flame isn't barbequing. It's cooking. Most restaurants that don't specialize in barbeque offer their "baby backs" cooked like this. Preparing ribs this way is like Christmas in August; it just isn't right. The meat ends up with no flavor and charred edges.

Baking

I have eaten ribs prepared in the oven. It's nothing I'm proud of and I was young. There are people that swear they can get just as good of a rib from the oven as I can from the grill. Let's get something straight: Liquid Smoke + barbeque sauce does not equal barbeque. Ovens are for cake.

Frying

Don't go there.

Barbeque Rib Rub for Beginners

Here in the South, we use a dry rub on our ribs. The principle ingredient in just about any variety of dry rub is paprika. That's what gives our ribs there reddish color. Below is a beginner's dry rub. I kept some of the ingredients optional because you'll want to start experimenting on what flavor you like the best. I don't care for a "pepper hot" in my ribs so I limit the black pepper and cayenne. If I put in a bit of these "hot boys", then I'll also offset it a bit with some brown sugar.

1/2 cup of paprika
1 tablespoon of salt
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
1 tablespoon of garlic salt
1 teaspoon of dry yellow mustard
1 tablespoon of cumin
1 spray bottle filled with half water and half apple juice

Optional ingredients:
1 tablespoon of cayenne
1 tablespoon of black pepper
1/4 cup of brown sugar

Mix your dry ingredients well. Don't be afraid to taste your mixture with the tip of your finger. if it tastes like crap on your finger, it'll taste like crap on your ribs. You'll want to massage this rub into your ribs. I don't mean simply sprinkling it on like salt at the dinner table. You need to get personal with that meat and really rub it in good. After you've got a good coating applied on both sides, wrap the slab up tight and place it in the fridge overnight. Good barbeque is a two day process...see ya tomorrow.

If you have a good barbeque rib recipe or have questions, PLEASE comment!








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Barbeque Rib Recipes

Welcome to Barbeque Rib Recipes. This site provides tips and techniques for barbeque ribs and smoking meat. If you have questions, comments, or want to send in your favorite barbeque recipe, please feel free to email me at Tghini@gmail.com.