Sunday, July 1, 2012

BBQ Sauce with Country Style Ribs

A bit of a change-up, here is the way we make BBQ Sauce around here.

...Why yes, it does involve booze. How could you have possible guessed that?

Photobucket

Now, BBQ sauce has always been a major-touchy subject. There are thousands of places that do it all differently and all of them say they are the top of the top top-ness of the top BBQ sauce. There are many differences, but one thing is the same; None of them are mass-produced, plastic bottle, high fructose corn syrup, TV commercial, bullshit in a bottle. The way to have real, true BBQ sauce, the kind that has been enjoyed for a century or 2 down there in them red-states where they think the earth is 6,000 years old and can't let dem lesbians get married or Republican-Jesus won't come to the tractor pull and hand out guns and moonshine to everyone... is to make it yourself, and then sit back and relax knowing that the nearest artificial ingredient is quite a few miles away.   ...man I love tractor pulls.

FYI we are using the Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar, not the shitty one with HFCS.



Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

St. Louis style ribs are good for this.  Here, we haven't done the full trimming because we want all the meat in there.  We're making them country stile, which is not BBQ (the sauce we are making is for BBQ but this meat will be country style).



 photo bbq006_zps8253e2aa.jpg


Photobucket

The whole rub (no amounts given, figure it out yourself): Brown sugar, mustard powder, turmeric, pinch of salt, paprika, oregano, Worcestershire, liquid smoke, cider vinegar, molasses, and tiny sprinkles of ground rosemary and fennel.

IMPORTANT:  I forgot to mention that you also MUST add vinegar to the rub at this point too. 2 - 4 ounces.  If you don't do this, the mustard powder will react with the water in the soda/booze and the heat from the cooking, and create mustard gas.  That stuff that's banned by the Geneva Convention, which you don't want coming out of your oven.



Photobucket


Yeah, that happened.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Covering the cooking trey with foil is a good idea, but just make sure to poke a small hole so that steam can escape. If it builds up and comes out the wrong way, it can spill crap everywhere in your oven.

Photobucket


There is really gonna be a lot of grease/oil which you have to get rid of one way or another. we skimmed it and it worked out pretty well.

This is when you can add chopped onions and garlic.  It's best to cook them in the pan you're going to drain the ribs into, while the ribs are cooking in the oven.  That way they're already cooked when you add them so you don't have to boil this too much.  The more you cook them (without burning anything) the softer they will get and that will make it easy to blend together.








This is also when you can add tomato paste and more molasses if you want it sweeter, or hot sauce, or more vinegar or salt or really anything you think might this better.

IMPORTANT: After you have removed the fat and the sauce cools down, take a hand-blender and give it a good run through so that the chopped onions and garlic and any other solid bits get totally liquified (or you can leave it chunky if you like that kind of thing). BUT, doing the blender thing will give it an even consistency and release more potential awesome flavors. This is when you throw in more bourbon or other whiskey as well if you so desire. ...we desired it.


Photobucket


1.5 liters sounds like a lot... and it is.  Just imagine how much you would spend at the store for that much quality sauce.  The good part is that this stuff keeps in the freezer for a very long time, so you can freeze 500ml portions of it for use as needed.  Also, this makes a great base sauce to add more onions, or hot-sauce, or mangoes, or anything else to, to make it meal specific (I even knew a kid who poured this stuff straight on ramen... kinda weird but whatever.






See you next time for
Cave Johnson's Combustible Lemonade



No comments:

Post a Comment