oven baked ribs

 

I've only cooked ribs a few times in my life. All these times occurring within the last 6 months or so....you know, since the pork obsession began. Every time I've done them I've stuck with the same method: 

dry rub applied and left to marinate overnight

baked or barbecued

georgia style barbecue sauce cooked up and applied at the end

That's the way I like my ribs, traditional and sloppy, messy. 

Did you know that not everyone likes vinegary, tomato-ey, spicy barbecue sauce though? 

It's a difficult concept for me but I'm nothing if not accommodating to the pickiness (read: obvious lack of refined palate and any real culinary appreciation) of SeaBass and other family members, so I thought I'd try something a bit different this time.

I came up with this marinade for my ribs and I must say, I'm pretty pleased. A nice balance of sweet and spicy, I still manage to get my vinegar content and the addition of lemon really lifts the whole thing and gives it some freshness.

The nice thing about this marinade is it's not overwhelming in it's raw form so you can really get in there and taste it as you're putting together and adjust it to your liking. 

I just kept playing until I was satisfied...the honey was a total afterthought but I think it really helped to create the sugary glaze the ribs ended up with.

So, give the recipe a try....and play with it!

 Oven Baked Ribs

1 rack pork ribs

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cider vinegar

zest of one lemon 

1 tbsp lemon juice

6 cloves garlic chopped

2 tbsp kosher salt

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp pepper

1 tbsp honey

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

Mix all ingredients together.

Pour over rack of ribs in a shallow dish.

cover ribs with saran wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Cover ribs with foil and bake on middle rack for 3 hours or until meat is tender and bones slide easily away from meat.

Remove foil for the last 1/2 hour of cooking time.

Baste ribs with juices in the dish every 30 minutes while baking.

Note: I actually had just a dash of cloves in my original version of the recipe but I'm totally not a fan of cloves and even the minute amount I had in the marinade bugged the crap out of me so I've omitted it here....if you like cloves though, I'd totally add it back in.