Sweet spice rub (p. 588) and Baby back ribs (p. 505)

I swear I already wrote this blog post but I can't seem to find it.

The meat in Iowa is SOOO much cheaper than it is in Colorado. I was flabbergasted when I spotted two racks of babyback ribs for $8! A great deal. I love pork ribs but I have never tried to make them (they seem difficult) so I was pretty excited to try my hand at them.

I decided to make Baby back ribs (p. 505) with a Sweet spice rub (p. 588).

The rub was simple--I mixed paprika, brown sugar, cumin, black pepper, and coarse salt in a bowl. I halved the recipe because these rub recipes make an enormous amount of rub.



I smeared (yes, smeared is the technical term) the rub all over the ribs:



If you plan on keeping some of the rub for the future, make sure not to contaminate it with your hands or whatever you are using to apply the rub--pour half of it in to another container before you start. You don't want to keep any rub that you've touched after touching raw meat--throw it away. It's better to make a new batch of spices than to get food poisoning.

I poured a bottle of beer in to the container (I used Miller High Life [the Champagne of Beers] because I really like the can):



Mom was pretty excited to use her "marination container" which she had received at a Tupperware party decades before and rarely used. I can't figure out why she bought it--my mom never marinates anything.



The ribs marinated overnight:



I covered the ribs with foil and cooked them for an hour and a half:



I slathered barbecue sauce on the ribs (homemade--based on TJOC's version but I fooled around with it quite a bit. I'm proud I've made it to the point where I can freehand things like barbecue sauce). They went back in the oven--TJOC recommends another hour but they only needed another thirty minutes.



The finished product:




Delicious! I love pork ribs and baby back ribs are my very favorite. It was exciting to make them myself and have them turn out so well. They were so tender, they pulled right off the bone (as evidenced in the following picture). If you like ribs and are afraid of making them, try it! They really were very easy.



My one issue--I didn't love the spice rub. It had a really, really, really strong cumin taste and it was too overwhelming for me. If you love cumin, this is the rub for you. If you don't, dial it down. The ribs were extremely flavorful but it would be hard for them not to be between the natural pork flavor, the sauce, and the rub.