My friend Carol is coming for dinner tonight and I am making all hors d’oeuvres. No real dinner. She loves ribs and I had these small ribs from a “fire sale.” My meat guys unloading their stuff last winter.
They are the perfect size for hors d’oeuvres. I charred them on the grill. Cut them into individual portions and threw them in the slow cooker with a batch of my ho-made BBQ sauce. Actually it’s not mine, per se, it is my friend Judy’s who opened my eyes to real bbq sauce decades ago. She acted, at the time, like it was just, well, what you made. But no one I ever knew made barbecue sauce. That was something you bought in a jar. But the fact of the matter is that it is better when you make it yourself and it takes like 2 minutes.
This sauce has been my hero sauce since she made it in 1979 or so. I’ve used it hundreds of times, given it for Christmas, used it in my restaurant. (And that recipe lives on in the minds and menus of all the cooks who worked there.)
I slow cooked these in barbecue sauce but normally I would slow cook them and then glaze them with sauce and finish on the grill or in the oven. In any event there are plenty of ways to accomplish ribs. This is only one method. And I will heat these up on the grill tonight. Maybe get a little caramelization going.
We eat tonight. I will let you know.
Recipe follows.
Judy Anderson’s Barbecue Sauce
(used without permission)
This recipe is not cooked. But it’s best if it’s made a day or two in advance. It will last for a month in the refrigerator and this
amount is more than you’d need for any one dinner.
Into a large container Put:
1 32 oz bottle of ketchup
Then fill half way with water and shake thoroughly and
add water to bowl
1/4 cup or more brown sugar
3 – 4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (or however the hell you spell that)
3/4 cup BEST quality mild chile powder ( I ONLY use Spice
House chile powder)
3 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
Mix it all up.
That’s the basic recipe. You can also add TBS/tsps of
your favorite ingredients such as:
Molasses
Orange Juice Concentrate
Pineapple Juice
Honey
Soy sauce
Coffee