Country Style Ribs Made Easy

I got a really great deal on some pork country style ribs at Food Lion. They were offering them for only $0.88 a lb. I could not pass that up. These ribs are cut from the blade end of a pork loin next to the shoulder. The meat is fatty and may or may not contain bone. Unlike a traditional rib, these are kinda hard to eat with fingers because they tend to end up as lumps of meat, falling apart if ya slow cook them, as we are going to do today. These are excellent served on a bed of rice. This cut of pork typically goes on sale in my area about once every 4-5 weeks and when it does, I like to stock up. After you see how easy this is, you will want to keep an eye out for the sales as well. (and we get to use beer!)

What's needed:

aluminum foil
aluminum roaster pan (heavy duty)
your favorite rib rub
2 16 oz BBQ sauce
can of beer
onion
pepper mill
8-9 lbs of country style ribs

Serves 6 - 8

As I said, this is a fairly easy recipe, in fact, you can assemble the ingredients grill side if you have a table outdoors. You'll want to rinse and pat dry the pork and then apply the rub, massaging it good into the meat. Placed the ribs in large zip locs and refrigerate overnight. If you are in a rush like I am today, you'll rub them and then let them set out until they are room temperature.

Here is my Weber, ready to light for indirect cooking. Indirect cooking means we are going to have the heat over to the side so the food will not sit directly over it. Notice the two charcoal receptacles on either side of the chimney. On a gas grill, you simply turn on one side of the grill and leave the other off. I'll be using mesquite chips both times the ribs are on the rack.




Make sure to oil the cooking rack to minimize sticking. We want a hot fire because the outer fat and meat will be sealed when the sugars in the pork caramelize on the surface. By quickly searing the outside, we seal the juices in on the inside. We are just going to seal the meat and grill mark it, then toss it into our foil roaster pan.

 OK, we are almost to the part were we get to open the beer. The beer for the pork should be room temp, the beer for you should be cold. I usually place a bit of BBQ sauce on the bottom of the pan, then start placing my pork ribs into the roaster. Do not pack it too tight, we want our liquids to be able to circulate easily around the meat. The second layer of pork should be layered in such a way that it cris crosses the pieces in the first layer, pouring in BBQ sauce as we go. If you like hot pork, you can also add wing sauce or hot sauce.

When all the pork is in the pan, toss in the onion, cut up into 1/8th wedges. Pout the beer into the empty BBQ sauce containers and place tops on and shake and then pour over pork. Tightly cover the roaster pan with foil.  At this time, we may need to add more charcoal and prepare to slowly cook our ribs. This process will take about 1.5 hours, depending on how fatty the pieces were. We are going to render the fat and stew the pork.

After we have cooked off most of the fat, the meat should almost be falling apart at this stage. Remove the roaster from the grill and prepare the grill for direct cooking, medium heat. The easiest way to do this is to have a starter chimney already going with hot embers, or mix your indirect left over coals with some new ones and let it come to temp. We are going to remove the ribs, cook an additional 5-10 minutes to set the sauce and then plate. I like to crack fresh black pepper over the meat at this stage for a bit of a kick. I'll be serving the pork over rice, so my automatic rice maker is taking care of that for me already. The pork will be falling apart and not require a knife. It'll melt in your mouth.

This method is awesome for those unfortunate days when you don't have time to tend to the grill much or when you want to entertain outdoors as dinner is cooking. This method offers you time to spend with guests and enjoy a cold beverage as the warm one steams it lovely fragrance into the air.

The juices and sauce in the pan will be very fatty. You can spoon off the fat and use the sauce to drizzle over the ribs and rice. I've even reused the sauce on a second batch before.

I used small pictures so the formating would look good. To view the full size pic, simply click on the small pic in the blog and the full size photo will open.

RaceyB

RaceyB's Outdoor Cooking Fun