I never really made ribs at home because I always thought you need to have smoker and go through a very long and complicated process, to get something decent. Turns out you can have delicious ribs at home and you don’t need a smoker, a crockpot or any other sophisticated equipment.
So if you want to enjoy this
keep reading!
Ingredients
Primary
- 2.5 Kg of ribs
- 4 large potatoes
- 1 can of coke
- Fresh dill
- Water
- Crème Fraîche
For the rub
- Cumin
- Brown Sugar
- Ginger powder
- Garlic powder
- Pepper
- Salt
- Smokey (or regular) paprika
- Rosemary
- Tumeric
or replace the above with something like Jack Stack BBQ rub.
For the glazing
- Ketchup
- Brown sugar
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Worcestershire sauce
- Mustard Powder
- Broth from cooking process
or use off the shelf BBQ sauce (although I’d still add broth to it)
Process
Rub the ribs
Put all the ingredients for the rub in a bowl and mix well. I can’t give you exact measurement but I can recommend you taste it before rubbing it on the ribs, because it might be too salty, too sweet or too spicy.
Once you have the mix, rub it all over the ribs, making sure it sticks well and you get all that wonderful rub into the ribs.
Put the ribs in a bowl and cover. Put in the fridge for about 12 hours. Doing this the night before is sufficient.
Slow cook the ribs
Take a large pot (or you can use a crockpot) and place the ribs in it, one on top of each other. Press them down and make sure it’s nice and compact.
Pour a can of coke and fill with water until you the ribs are completely covered with water. The coke is optional. I’ve cookied with and without. Apparently it makes the meat softer but to be honest, just water worked well also. Slow cook for about 4 hours and then let it boil for 30 minutes.
Most stoves/crockpots have a setting for slow cooking. The important thing is that you don’t want the water to boil and evaporate. You can of course reduce this time by using a pressure cooker.
The amount of time you cook varies on the quantity of ribs. What you want to try and do is find that point where the meat is very soft but it won’t fall to bits when you take the ribs out.
Prepare the glaze
Mix the ingredients of the glaze with some broth from the ribs (i.e. the water you cooked the ribs in). Don’t make it too loose because you’re going to want to rub it on the ribs for it to stay, not slide off.
Glaze the ribs
Take the ribs carefully out of the pot and put them on an oven tray. Rub them with the glaze and put them to grill in the oven for about 15 minutes on each side on about 200C. What you want to make sure is that some of the fat becomes crispy.
The potatoes
Peel and cut up the potatoes into halves or quarters and put them to cook in the broth from the ribs. Once they’re mostly cooked (they shouldn’t fall apart), take them out and pan-fry them with some olive oil and chopped up fresh dill.
For the potato sauce, the broth by now should have reduced significantly, due to the boiling process and potato starch. Reduce it until you get a creamy sauce, adding a little bit of crème fraîche.
The Pulled Pork Tortilla (a.k.a. next day left-overs)
If you have ribs left over for the next day, you can remove all the meat from them, toss them in a frying pan and get them nice and soft. Add a tiny bit of water to get the juices flowing.
In a pot, whisk a few eggs and once they’re fully wisked add the meat from the frying pain (hot) to the eggs. Mix in the bowl a little bit and then pour it back in the frying pan. Once it’s more or less cooked flip it over and let it cook a tiny bit more. You’ll be then left with a nice Pulled Pork Tortilla for breakfast or lunch.
