Barbecued Baby Back Ribs (and Barbecued Chicken)
from Hearty Country Cooking(St. Martin's Griffin, 1996)
With this slow cooker barbecue, you combine opposites: old and new, fast and slow. The combination of slow cooking and fast grilling makes these ribs tender and crisp. When you add a few grilled vegetables, you have another opposite that brings balance: light vegetables and rich pork barbecue.
Slow cooking results in tender ribs, and fast cooking yields flavor. I cook the ribs indoors in a slow cooker, and outdoors on a grill. The result is a tender, succulent serving, soft meat inside and crisp with burned edges outside.
Like glaze on a cake, barbecue sauce completes the dish. Flavored with hickory smoke, honey and a mix of spices, the sauce adds flavor and moisture. Select one of the many commercial barbecue sauces available, or make our own. I have observed two styles of barbecue sauce: thick Texas style and thin Carolina style. Thick barbecue sauces, like sauces that come out of a Kraft bottle, are Texas style. Hot and spicy, these sauces are almost as thick as ketchup and I brush them on cooked meat. We make thin barbecue sauces, indigenous to the Carolinas, with spices, vinegar, water, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce. These thin sauces are vinegar marinades. These "soppin'" sauces range from thin to thick, depending on the amount of tomato paste or ketchup we add. When using Carolina-style sauces, dip the pieces of meat into the sauce every twenty minutes or so throughout the cooking.
Your butcher cuts baby back, back ribs or country ribs from a small pig, one that weighs 180 pounds or less. Look for whole racks, eighteen to twenty- four inches long, four to five inches across, and under three pounds.
2 sides baby back ribs (racks weigh 1 3/4 pounds and are 18"24" long)
2 cups Texas Style Barbecue Sauce or commercial thick, spicy sauce
1. Cut each side of ribs so that it will fit into your slow-cooker. Cut the side of ribs into as few pieces as possible. Place the ribs in the slow-cooker and cook at medium for 10 hours. The temperature in the crock pot should stay at about 165 degrees F.
2. Fifteen minutes before serving time, heat a gas grill. When the grill is hot, move the ribs from the crock pot to the grill. Watch the ribs carefully, or you may burn them. After you grill the ribs for 2 minutes on each side, use a pastry brush to brush the top (tips down, convex side up) side of the ribs with barbecue sauce. To keep the sauce from burning, I don't put it on the bottom. Put the ribs back on the grill, sauce up, and grill for another 1 to 2 minutes. Add more sauce and grill 1 more minute.
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