Weekend Cooking: Barbecue Ribs ala St. Louis

As I sat in church listening to the priest's homily on Lent, my thoughts wandered when abstinence from meat was mentioned.  And I tell you if there was a camera rolling at the time, it would have captured how my face changed from attentively-listening-serene-look to a frazzled what-could-I-serve-my-hubby-for-dinner-tonight-look.

I mean with all the food blogging that I do, I should be well organized and a wizard at meal planning, but alas it escaped me that this week, Ash Wednesday and Friday are almost back-to-back no meat days!  And  to make matters worse, my post today is all about meat... talk about not being ahead of the game huh! LOL!

But I'm sure you'll forgive me because what I am sharing with you is something special.  A dish that has a St. Louis trademark... and yes you guessed it right, it's Pork Barbecue Ribs baby!

Well to tell you frankly, I never tried cooking barbecue with a dry rub before.  But since moving to St. Louis, I have to cook the way the locals do.  Luckily there were resources at my finger tips and found the best rub to try.  Okay, it's not really St. Louis but it's a Memphis-style dry rub that I found online.  Most of the down home barbecue restaurants around here use the Memphis way, which is basically to use a  dry rub.  The St. Louis stamp to the dish is the butcher's cut:  baby back ribs that's cut shorter but has more meat.  This makes it easier to cook the ribs evenly.  Did I confuse you?  I hope to explain further, so here we go:    

Pork Barbecue Ribs 

Here's the original Meathead's Memphis Dust rub recipe.  The dust rub is actually like pixie dust that has magically transformed my pork ribs (and yes it was on sale which made it doubly magical!) into a finger licking good weekend meal.  I mentioned that St. Louis barbecue style differs in the cut.  I'm not sure if these ribs are considered STL cut but they were on sale and that mattered to me. LOL! 

Please go to Meathead's website and check out the dry rub recipe.  Make sure not to leave out any ingredient as noted by the author.  He shares valuable information on his site too, so it's a great resource for all things barbecue.

Directions:

Set your oven to 350 degrees.  Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of rub on each side of the slab.  Massage the rub around the meat and leave it for an hour.  It's even better if you could leave it overnight.  Make sure to refrigerate the meat if you decide to leave it overnight.

Put the rib on a pan with its arch up (like an inverted U) and cover it with aluminum foil.  Bake it for an hour. 

Remove the pan from the oven and remove the foil.  Make sure to use kitchen mitts because it will be steaming hot.  Bring back the pan and broil it on high for 5 - 10 minutes until the sugar caramelizes and will give the slab of meat a nice crust.  Please be careful not to burn the meat, remove from the oven once the top caramelizes and has a dark brown color.

Enjoy!

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