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Sunday, June 6, 2010

Dynamite Bourbon Ribs


A soy-bourbon marinated and oven-baked country-style rib

A few weeks ago country-style ribs were on sale, so I hunted down a new recipe to try. A quick search on All Recipes landed me on a simple recipe that was originally for grilling. The ribs wound up baking in the oven as I, sadly, don't have a grill. The cast-iron grill pan was a possibility, but I opted against that just because of how long it would have to be on to cook this amount of ribs. The spatter all over the kitchen would have reduced me to tears.

Other than the actual cooking method, I only changed the quantity of ribs and how the marinade was prepared. I had about five-and-a-half pounds of ribs and marinated all of them in the original amount of marinade. Because I don't have a food processor, I didn't process the marinade, but simply dumped everything together, stirred it up and threw the ribs in.

Basically I changed everything about the recipe except the ingredients.

If you have a real grill out on the patio or in the backyard or even one you wheel out of the garage into the driveway, don't be shy about clicking the link below. I won't be hurt. Envious, but not hurt.

Dynamite Bourbon Ribs
adapted from allrecipes.com

1 c dark brown sugar
2/3 c bourbon
1 c light soy sauce
4 cloves garlic
5.5 lbs country style pork ribs

Dump brown sugar and garlic in a 9x13" baking dish. Add soy sauce and bourbon, mixing with a fork until sugar is dissolved. It'll take a few minutes.

Squeeze the ribs into the dish and marinate overnight in the refrigerator, turning once.

It's like a jig-saw puzzle, but I managed to make the pieces fit.

Bring the ribs out of the fridge and preheat the oven to 350°F.

Drain the marinade and bake the ribs for 30 minutes.

Flip the pork pieces and bake an additional 30 minutes.


Pour off accumulated fat, using tongs to keep the pork in the dish.


Bake an additional 60 minutes, turning ribs once, and covering with foil the last 30 minutes.


Let ribs stand for 10 minutes before serving.



Ok, if you check against the original recipe you'll see that the cooking time was increased by more than double. I was going to go with one hour in the oven but I remembered my last baked Country-Style Rib experience and decided two hours would be worth the extra "effort".

One, I desire tender ribs and two, I prefer less fat. Longer oven time with fattier meat means fat reduction and tenderizing. Period. Don't get me wrong, I like the flavor fat brings. I just don't care for too many excess hunks of fat hanging off my dinner.

That said, the ribs didn't have as much kick as I'd anticipated. Grill folks would probably have intense bourbon-soy flavor, but those of us relegated to the oven are sort of screwed. However, I do believe that searing the ribs before baking would be beneficial. Flavors would be sealed in and those excess hunks of fat would be cooked off right at the beginning. Actually, I've got five bucks on it. Any takers?

Would I do the recipe again? Most certainly, searing first and then baking.

Cost:
  • bone-in country-style ribs: $5.61
  • bourbon: $2.50
  • everything else, SWAG: $1
Total: $9.11 or $2.30 for each of four servings.

Don't give me crap about the serving size, there's bones and hunks of fat to be considered.

And yeah, we are pigs. I'll give that to you.

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