Grilled Pork Ribs

I just love to grill in the summer.  It does have its downsides being in Phoenix and standing outside in the roasting heat over a hot grill, but it creates significantly less dirty dishes and doesn't heat up my kitchen by using the oven.  Plus we have a pool, so a lot of times whomever is grilling will take pool breaks or just hang out in the pool while dinner cooks.  It's a pretty sweet system.

I've always been a fan of boneless ribs.  Gnawing on ribs with the bones in them has always seemed gross and honestly a little barbaric to me.  although for a lot of years I wouldn't even eat meat with bones in it because it reminded me that it once was walking around.  Can you tell I lived with vegetarians in college?  I don't think I had my first buffalo wing until I was in my mid-20s.  I've gotten over it now, but I still won't eat bone-in ribs.  Recently boneless ribs were on sale for a super good price, so I bought a package of them planning on grilling them.  I wasn't really sure how to grill them, if I just threw them on there or what, so a little Googling directed me to a brine recipe, and I ran with it.  My uncle makes really fantastic grilled ribs, but I knew I'd need ingredients I didn't have, and I try to limit grocery store trips in the summer since I have to drag both kids with me.  This was also my first attempt at a brine, so I was pretty excited to try it out.

Grilled Boneless Pork Ribs

1 cup water
1/4 salt
1 T. sugar
3 pounds boneless country style pork ribs

In a gallon Ziploc bag, combine water, salt, and sugar.  Add in ribs, squeeze out excess air, and let sit for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight.

Preheat your grill for indirect heat grilling (is that the right phrase?).  My grill has four burners, I turned on all four to heat it up, then reduced the middle two super low.  Lay ribs in the middle of the grill and cook for 10 minutes.  Flip them over and grill another 10.  Their internal temperature should be 145 degrees.  Remove from grill and serve with your favorite barbecue sauce (or make your own if you're an overachiever like me).

*****

I really had no idea how this was going to turn out.  I'll be honest--I had visions of dried out, tough, inedible ribs, and I was working on a back up dinner plan in the back of my head the whole time.  My original plan had been to only cook about half the package of ribs, but Boy #2 was helping me make dinner, and he said we should do all of them so there'd be leftovers.  Thankfully he's a lot more optimistic than his mama because I didn't know if we should plan on leftovers in case they were awful.

These turned out AMAZING.  I don't know why I doubted myself.  Normally my go-to method of cooking boneless ribs is throwing them in the crockpot with a sweet and sour barbecue sauce that's my great aunt's recipe, but this may very well be my new go to.  It was a huge hit with my family.  There were leftovers but not many.  They were good on their own, they were good with the barbecue sauce (although my kids preferred them without the sauce, the husband and I were torn on which was better).  This was an all around winner!!

 My grill could maybe use a cleaning.

 I tried to make this one a little scenic.  See my failing garden in the background?  Those green things are my sad basil plants that are the only remnant of what I had hoped to be a successful summer garden.

Sweet and Sour Ribs

How did it get to be Sunday afternoon already?! The boy is down for his nap, the husband is sleeping on the couch (which kind of sucks since there are dishes to be done in the kitchen), and I'm trying to get the baby down for a nap. Once nap time is done, I'm going for a pedi and then grocery shopping. My feet can use some pampering, and I was virtually a single parent the past two days, so the husband said he'd treat me. Excellent (said in Monty-Burns-esque voice). I'm trying to get back in the habit of using coupons when I grocery shop, so we'll see how I do today. There's lots of stuff on sale that I have coupons for, so I'm hoping to save more than I spend...I love when that happens!

Anyway, dinner is already cooking away in the crockpot, which I love. Who doesn't love crockpots?! Did I ever mention how I stood coveting the All Clad Slow Cooker at Sur La Table a couple weeks ago? Man, would I ever love to have that grace the presence of my kitchen. I was pretty tempted to treat myself to it, but in the end I just couldn't justify it. Someday.

I still had some boneless pork ribs in the freezer, and I was trying to use up stuff I had on hand this past week because both of my freezers were ridiculously full. This is one of our favorite dinners, so the stars all seemed to align.

Sweet and Sour Ribs
1 can Contadina sweet and sour sauce
1 cup barbecue sauce
Dash of soy sauce
3 T. brown sugar
Boneless ribs

Cut fat from ribs and boil 10 minutes. Mix first four ingredients together. Place ribs in crockpot and pour sauce over to coat. Cook six hours on low. Or, place ribs in baking dish, pour sauce over ribs, and bake uncovered at 350 for 20 minutes, cover and bake for 40 more minutes.

*****

I can never find the Contadina sweet and sour sauce, so I make due with something else. usually I get the Kikkoman bottle, but I compared the ingredients of that to the ingredients in the La Choy bottle, and I liked the La Choy ingredients a lot better. I don't remember why exactly. I forgot to put the soy sauce in, so I'll throw some of that in when I go back downstairs. For side dishes I'm going to make macaroni and cheese, some kind of vegetable, and corn bread. Yum!

Sweet and Sour Ribs

Ah, the start of a new year. I know it's five days in, but the husband is back at work, and now it's back to the daily grind. I have big plans for 2009, we'll see if any of them happen. Not really big plans, plans for things I want to start doing around the house. My friend Kelly has a blog for getting organized, so I'm hoping to implement some of her ideas to get things in order around my house. I need to formalize my plan, though, otherwise it won't ever happen. When I first started staying home I made a schedule for myself of what laundry got done on what day (I swear I do laundry every freakin' day) and what chores happened on one day. Then I started slacking. I figure with two kids I need to get back in the habit of being organized, and I want a clean house again. Now that baby stuff is everywhere, the clutter is driving me crazy. So one of the things on my list for today is to work up a schedule.

But, since I am a first class procrastinator, I thought I'd update the blog with tonight's dinner. This was on my to do list for today, so I guess I'm not really slacking. :)

So, sweet and sour ribs. I used to make this all the time, and it was one of our most favorite dinners. What's that you say...don't remember seeing this on my blog before? Well, you probably haven't. I haven't made it in years because for some reason grocery stores stopped having boneless ribs on sale. And I'm entirely too cheap to pay full price for them, even though we love this recipe. I was at Costco last week (by myself!! What a treat!) and walked past the meat section to see what their prices on various things were. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw boneless pork ribs for $1.89 a pound. Lordy mama...I was so excited!! I even called my mom to tell her. I have to share when I get excited, what can I say. I'm so excited we can start having this on a regular basis again. I heart crock pot dinners because it minimizes the craziness of getting things together at dinnertime. I had a minor panic attack when looking for the recipe because it wasn't in my recipe folder like I thought it would be. Then I thought, "Maybe I actually filed it away in my recipe box." Sure enough...there it was! Crisis averted. Not really--I could have just called my mom and gotten the recipe from her.

Sweet and Sour Ribs
1 can Contadina sweet and sour sauce
1 cup barbecue sauce
Dash of soy sauce
3 T. brown sugar
Boneless ribs

Cut fat from ribs and boil 10 minutes. Mix first four ingredients together. Place ribs in crockpot and pour sauce over to coat. Cook six hours on low. Or, place ribs in baking dish, pour sauce over ribs, and bake uncovered at 350 for 20 minutes, cover and bake for 40 more minutes.

*****

My crockpot cooking time is estimated, but I'm pretty sure six hours on low is right. I remember coming home at lunch one day when I worked to put them in the crockpot, and we usually ate between 6:00 and 7:00. Also, I have only been able to find Contadina sweet and sour sauce once in all the years I've been making this, so I usually just buy the bottle of Kikkoman sweet and sour sauce and call it good.

We were going to have baked beans with this, but I forgot to buy them yesterday, so I'm not sure what we'll have. I need to go through the pantry and see what all is in there. I saw a Pasta Roni mix I'd like to get rid of, so maybe we'll have that, a vegetable, and I might make some corn bread if I have a mix or have everything on hand for it. Actually I just got a recipe for some kind of corn casserole, so if I have everything maybe I'll make that instead of corn bread.

*****

These ribs were just as good as we remembered them!! I think I cooked them a little too long (I ended up doing four hours on high because I had a baby to deal with and couldn't get them in the crockpot in time for six hours on low) because if you got a bite without much sauce, it was a bit dry. but the sauce was oh-so-yummy. I could have eaten it with a spoon. We had pasta roni, corn bread, and salad with it. I'm glad I found cheap boneless ribs so we can have this more often.