Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:36 pm
Minde - Your spare ribs will turn out just fine. See if you can go online and find Alton Brown's TV episode about ribs from his show "Good Eats". He pretty much distills all of the recommendations here down into easy to follow directions. When we do ribs at my house, my husband does remove the membrane on the back (concave) side of the ribs with a pair of needle nose pliers we keep in the kitchen for that sort of thing. Alton Brown says to stick the handle of a spoon under the membrane to loosen part of it and then grip it with a paper towel to pull it off by hand. Either way works and results in ribs that come apart much easier. I coat the ribs with a good spice rub (Alton also recommends a coating of mustard to hold the rub better) and let them sit in the refrigerator several hours or overnight before you start cooking. You can find recipes for rubs online - most of them are a mixture of brown sugar, seasonings and salt which flavors the meat and forms kind of a "skin" on the outside that will hold in the juices while they cook. Then when I am ready to cook them I add some moisture to a large roaster - you can use apple cider, beer, water or a mixture of any of the above with some onions, bay leaves, maple syrup or anything that has a flavor that you'd like to incorporate. Cover tightly with foil and cook them long and slow - no more than 325 for at least 2.5 to 3 hours depending on how big/thick the ribs are. The key is to cook slowly to liquify the connective tissue in the meat to make them tender. If you're worried about doing this part right you can always do it the day before and then finish them the next day. We put them on the grill at this point with some good woodchips (hickory, cherry, apple) that have been soaked in water overnight. We have a fancy smoking box but you can simply drain the water off and put them into a disposable aluminum pan in a corner of your grill and as the grill heats the chips they will start to smoke and impart that flavor into the ribs. Don't get the grill too hot - you just want enough moist heat to instill that smokey flavor not turn them into jerky. After a half hour or 45 minutes you can start brushing on your sauce - first one side, allow it to "set" and then flip and do the same on the other side. (We like KC Masterpiece or Sweet Baby Rays.) The more you take your time, the better they are! Oh yeah....country ribs actually come from the shoulder which is also called a Boston butt. We can get pork shoulders SO cheap at our store....I guess no one wants to bother with them, but the whole shoulders are what you cook for pulled pork - YUM! I also use them for enchiladas, tamales and that sort of thing. Same idea - long and slow (longER because it's a bigger hunk of meat) to break down connective tissue.