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!