Sunday Recipe. . .

This past weekend the gals of the Sassy Sows BBQ cooking team took their traveling road show down to Vidalia, Louisiana to open up a can or two of whoopass on the competition at the Jim Bowie Festival. Stop by Torture and Bliss for a wrapup of the challenge.

Linder was nice enough to invite me along and were I not up to my elbows in brown, tan and gray sandy, silty clay this weekend, I would have tagged along happily. Maybe I'll attend the Heavenly Hogs Championship Contest this weekend up in Madison.

Anyways. . .in honour of my favorite gals, I whipped up a few ribs of my own using my time tested cheating ways to produce fine, top-quality BBQ ribs in about 1/3 the time. Cheater cheater pumpkin eater, yeah I know. . .screw you.

I'm not going to give away my recipe as I would never share anything I've ever learned watching the Sassy Sows or Brian, Leslie, Gary and the gang with Ubon's, so a quantitative recipe for my sauce you will not find, but a damn quick technique for making fine succulent ribs you will find.

Here we go. . .

This time I felt taking the sauce in a bit of an Asian direction as I think the bright and sweet qualities of the ginger and soy meld quite well with a 1 hour ride over a little hickory wood and charcoal. For the sauce I might have used the following ingredients, quantities not included:



ginger
garlic
soy sauce
lemon juice
orange juice
white vinegar
sugar
fish sauce
hoisin sauce
cilantro
onion
carrot
celery
ketchup
whole grain mustard
and for ambiguity. . .various natural flavors

More or less, I sauteed the ginger and garlic in a large pot and as you can see I used a quite low-sided and wide pot. This style of cooking vessel facilitates evaporation and improves our cooking time, which is our goal because we are lazy, right?



Add the oil to a hot pot, add the ginger and garlic, saute briefly to release the aromatic oils and add the mirepoix. Be careful not to burn the garlic and ginger. If you do, start over and spank your own ass for being too lazy. Mind your business with a wooden spoon as I have done. You see that spoon, don't you Beatrice?

Saute the mirepoix for several minutes, you know, translucent onions and such. You know that don't you? Add the wet ingredients, lifting any fond you may have created, then add the ribs, cover with water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, skim the inevitable scum that will rise and simmer your ribs for about an hour.


Keep an eye on them at this point, stick a fork in them, when the meat just starts to release from the bone with some force on your part, remove them from the liquid. Remember, you'll still need some time on the grill for these babies, don't overcook them.

After removing the ribs, continue to reduce the cooking liquid, constantly skimming for fat and coagulated meat junk. It's there. Get it.

When your sauce has reduced by half and begins to thicken, now is the time to correct the balance. A little sugar here, a little vinegar there, maybe some more soy for salt. Fix it here and reduce a little bit further. It should be the consistency of a glaze and not nearly as thick as a BBQ sauce. This reduction will serve the dual-purpose of basting and saucing at the same time on the grill.

In the meantime, make your fire in the grill for indirect heating and let it burn down to medium low heat. We will control the cooking temperature by the addition of the hickory chunks every now and then. Slather a little oil on your ribs and ease them onto the grill. Close the cover and go get a beer. If you're lucky like me, the two mental giants who like to come by and kill deer at your place will stop by and irritate the crap out of you to the point where you want to go hide in the bathroom for an hour.

But don't do that! Keep an eye on your ribs, but don't be impatient either. Let them smoke over that low heat and keep the smoke rolling. Flip them over occasionally, move them front to back, stack them, keep them happy.



Baste every 15 minutes. . .more if you like, but 15 is a good tempo. We don't want to interfere with the fire too much. After about an hour, I like to open the grill, heat the fire up a good bit to get some nice caramelization for the last couple of bastings. And if the gods of cookery are with you, your ribs will look something like this:



Slap them puppies on a plate with some Asian-inspired cole slaw, then go slap yo' momma. She'd be mighty proud.


Now, where's that wooden spoon? And has anyone seen my whisk?