Over the Labor Day weekend I set my mind upon trying out a new recipe and way of cooking ribs from Pioneer Woman and Pam Anderson — sorry, not that Pam Anderson.
I’ve grilled/smoked ribs a few times before and they turned out superb. But I’ve never used a dry rub or an oven to cook them – so I was interesting to see how they came out.
The recipe is super easy. And fairly quick. It took 5-10 minutes of prep time and 3 hours of cooking time.
To begin with, mix all the dry rub ingredients together ::
The dry rub is simply ::
6 tablespoons brown sugar
6 tablespoons paprika
3 tablespoons ground black pepper
3 tablespoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Next sprinkle salt over the ribs and then coat the ribs with Dijon mustard ::
I had 9 tablespoons set aside for the recipe, and used about 3/4 of that amount for the two slabs of pork ribs I cooked.
Next generously cover the ribs with the mixed dry rub ::
And next your ready to throw those suckers in your oven at 250 degrees for 2-3 hours ::
I initially started out with these on separate pans and racks in the oven, but decided it would be best to try and keep them on the same rack at least. So I maneuvered the slabs-o-ribs around so they’d both fit on the same cooking sheet and aluminum foil.
Pioneer Woman suggests throwing the ribs directly on the oven rack for optimal cooking (with some heavy duty foil underneath to catch the drippings) but since Laurie just gave our oven a thorough cleaning, I decided I didn’t have the cojones to cook them that way.
After 3 hrs and 15 minutes, the ribs were done and ready to be chopped and carried to our Labor Day BBQ.
I meant to get some pictures of the finished ribs, but our time ran short and I forgot to grab some before we headed out the door. DOH! You’ll just have to check Pioneer Woman’s blog for those.
In the end, they turned out great – but without the smoked flavor I’ve come to love with typical Texas BBQ. They probably wouldn’t be my preferred method of cooking ribs in the future, but they’re a great backup if you want an easy, quick alternative.
As an added bonus, I used the left over dry rub to season up the burger patties for our cookout as well.
What’d you cook for the Labor Day weekend?
