May 24, 2006
By Maggie Heyn Richardson
Regarding last week’s post on our beloved Whole Foods’ recent lameness, I thought it only fair to cc the company brass my complaints about dated goods, excuse-making staff and tasteless side dishes. After all, we want to see them succeed. Will report feedback as soon as it arrives.
Now onto the subject of ribs.
Until recently, I had the ill-founded notion that I needed to cook the living daylights out of baby back ribs in order to achieve that mellow, falling-off-the-bone texture characteristic of barbecue joints. My strategy has been: First, boil them in Abita root beer. Second, slow roast them in the oven for a few hours. Third, polish them off on the grill. Tender? I suppose. But whatever natural meaty flavor that once existed was rendered away in all that “cooking.”
My latest strategy (resulting from a lack of time more than brainy creativity) was to only throw them on the grill. Dousing them with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, I cooked the racks over indirect heat for 45 minutes (more, if time permitted), then let them rest for maybe 15 minutes. By no means do they fall apart this way, but they’re toothy, tender, and packed with flavor. Acidic substances – like vinegar and notably, papaya, are fabulous meat tenderizers. Lemon acts similarly.
Eat away!
Comments
Posted by Mkomisch on May 25 at 11:29 a.m.
Have you given pressure cooking a shot? I'm by no means a cook myself, but my mother always pressure cooks her ribs and they're amazingly tender. In fact, we've inadvertently ended up making pulled pork instead on a few occassions because the meat fell right off of the bone when removing the ribs from the pot. Just a thought!
Posted by sherishiqua on June 5 at 3:13 p.m.
You could try it the way decent BBQ joints cook ribs, put a dry rub on the ribs and slow cook them like at 180 degrees for awhile. You can take many short cuts, but if you want anything close to reall bbq, you have to do it the right way, and with real smoke is not a bad idea either.
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