Rib sauce

All about rib sauces on the web!

Hard Rock Cafe Watermelon BBQ Sauce:

Watermelon rind from about 1/2 of a small watermelon
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup tomato catsup
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

To prepare the watermelon rind, cut off the green skin and about 1/2 inch of the hard white part of the rind, keeping the part that is lighter red to white. This is the tender part of the rind. (Avoid using the harder, white rind that is just inside the green skin.)

Cut the trimmed rind into chunks or pieces, and pur e in a blender or food processor for about 10 seconds only. Strain the liquid from the pulp, and measure 1 cup of strained pulp.

In a saucepan, combine the 1 cup of strained pulp with all of the remaining ingredients, and bring this mixture to a boil over high heat. Immediately reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour or until the sauce has reached desired thickness.

To make the famous ribs:

Marinate 4 pounds of baby back ribs for two hours minimum – or overnight – in one recipe for Watermelon Barbecue Sauce, reserving some sauce (marinade) for basting at grilling time.

Bake the marinated ribs, wrapped in foil (seam side up so the package won’t leak in the oven), at 300 degrees F for 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until ribs are very tender and the rib meat begins to pull back (about 1/2 inch) from the cut ends of the bone.

Remove ribs from foil and place on grill, brushing with reserved marinade – about 2 to 4 minutes per side. Finished ribs should be slightly charred, but not burned.

Serve with leftover sauce on the side.

Spend enough time talking barbeque with folks and sooner or later the subject of preparing ribs will come up. More often as not it’s in the form of a question along the lines of:

“How do I get my ribs to taste like (insert the name of a restaurant, bbq joint or neighbor/cousin/brother-in-law)?”

Based upon the number of folks involved in the conversation there will be, at the very least, an equal number of answers and methods proclaimed as the one-and-only-sure-fire-method.

The trouble with all of this is – everyone likes their ribs a bit differently. Oh – and there are different types of ribs – so that tends to, ahem, ‘flavor’ the advice as well.

Here’s a methodology that is practiced by many successful grill masters and I post it here only as a guideline for you, if you haven’t found the answer to your rib questions, and not as a proclamation as the only sure-fire way. It’s commonly referred to as the 3:2:1 method – which refers to the approximate hours for each of the distinct cooking processes that barbeque pit-masters use to prepare ribs.

After brining and/or marinating and/or seasoning with rub and/or par-boiling and/or prepping the ribs before cooking – first step is to place the ribs in the grill or smoker and cook:

3 hours (approximately) of slow cooking at or about 225F – 250F degrees using traditional indirect heat method with some wood smoke
The next step is to wrap the ribs in foil and cook:

2 hours (approximately) of slow cooking at or about 225F – 250F degrees using traditional indirect heat method wrapped in foil and some sauce or liquid added
And to finish … the ribs remain wrapped in the foil, maybe a bit more liquid is added and they get:

1 hour (approximately) of ‘hold time’ in an insulated cooler or closed oven – still wrapped in foil. If necessary and/or desired before serving use “some” exposure to direct grilling heat to finish up the glaze or to crisp the skin to the degree that you please yourself.
Will this get you the results you want? NOPE.

It’s just a guideline for you to use for developing your own technique and methodology that works for your taste and your cooker. It’s all up to you to interpret and personalize the process. Beginning with the type of meat you purchase and whether your desired method of preparation includes brining, boiling, and/or dry rub seasoning; your choice of the ingredients for the rub (or not) and how you decide to sauce or not sauce, when to sauce and such – will all come into play. Oh, and if you are preparing baby-back pork ribs they will require that you definitely tweak the times to suit your tastes as they most likely will cook faster than beef ribs, and those will cook differently than St. Louis style ribs which will cook a bit differently than Memphis style cuts and those will be a different cook from whatever your local meat market or regional favorite cut is.

Here are a few more proclamations that you may encounter in your personal quest to prepare the perfect ribs:

-par-boiling ribs is a sin against nature and barbeque
-par-boiling ribs in seasoned water is the best way to add extra flavor and moisture
-brining pork ribs is unnecessary
-brining pork ribs is necessary
-ribs should fall off the bone when they are done to perfection
-rib meat that falls off the bone is over cooked
-selecting the exact combination of spices for the rub is what it takes bring out the best flavors
-selecting the right wood smoke is what it takes to bring out the best flavors
-selecting the exact combination of sauce is what it takes bring out the best flavors
-using only good salt and pepper is what it takes to bring out the best flavors
-the best rib sauce is mustard-based
-the best rib sauce is vinegar-based
-the best rib sauce is tomato-based
-the best rib sauce is soy-based
-the best rib sauce is beer-based
-the best rib sauce is on-the side and used for the fried potato wedges
-yada yada yada

Are you beginning see something in all this? It’s personal choice. And it’s gonna take some experimentation on your part to get to the place where you are consistently delivering the product you want to enjoy and share (or not share!) with friends.

I encourage you to take a look at some of the rib recipes listed on our site and see if there are any that make sense to you and might be something you’d like to try out. After all you get to eat your mistakes.

Happy Grilling!

Here is a quick and easy to follow BBQ sauce recipe for BBQ ribs and will also work nicely for your other barbecue foods such as barbecue hamburgers, barbecue chicken, barbecue baby back rib, or barbecue brisket.

It is easy because it just gives you the basic guidelines for whipping up your own customized bbq ribs sauces so that you will never again have to follow a recipe. You know the old saying: “give a man a fish and feed him for a day; but teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime”. I decided that this is true when it comes to outdoor cooking – people are just tired of having to follow recipes and exact amounts all the time, it would be much easier if you could throw these things together based not on what some internet barbecue site says, but rather based on the ingredients that you actually have. Nothing is more frustrating than reading through the recipe ingredient list and discovering that you are missing one or two items.

I hope that you will find that this bbq baby back rib sauce recipe will work well on short notice or if you are too busy to spend two or three hours on just the recipe for bbq sauce. Cooking food sure gets a little easier if you can take a few shortcuts now and again when following a dinner recipe.

Quick note for easy cooking: this is not exactly gourmet cooking, it is bbq cooking, so I am including a variety of alternatives for the ingredients because, as stated above, I know how frustrating it can be to not have one or two of the recipe book items when trying to follow a supposedly easy bbq cooking recipe. Feel free to use any of the alternates – they each contribute a different flavoring or texture and will work well together in any combination.

Baby Back Ribs Recipe BBQ Sauce

Ingredients list:

Base: a good barbecue sauce recipe usually contains a tomato base of some sort, so use one or more of the following: Tomato Sauce, Ketchup, Canned Tomatoes, Diced Tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, bottled bbq sauce, or tomato paste. The last ingredient, tomato paste does not taste so great when used by itself but does add a nice texture and flavor when combined with one or more of the other recipe ingredients.

Another important flavor in bbq cooking is the sweetener. Now for this there are quite a few alternates and allows for the most imagination when cooking food. The primary sweeteners are all sugars, or are foods that contain high amounts of sugars: Sugar, Brown Sugar, (any kind of sugar), syrups, Coke or Pepsi etc., jelly (yes, normal grape or any other flavor of jelly works and tastes great in barbecue sauces).

The third ingredient is what I will simply call the balancer or the blender. This can easily be thought of as the tomato or sugar counterbalance. This ingredient smooths out the overall punch of the barbecue sauce. You can use things like Worcestershire sauce, mustards, steak sauces, etc.

Another key ingredient in common in both our bbq baby back rib recipe and overall cooking food recipes is the “punch”. This is the zing ingredient, the citrus, the part that makes your cheeks water. For this you can use lime juice, lemon juice, Italian dressings, vinegar and oil, orange juices, orange peel, etc. Here you can add any one of these or one of your own.

Now all that you really need to add to your custom recipe for bbq sauce is spice. Here is where you want to add those spices that appeal to you; do not make it too spicy if you are cooking for children because they can taste spices more severely than adults can. Here you can add salt, peppers, allspice, cayenne pepper, onion, garlic, etc.

Basically, all that you need to do for this bbq baby back rib sauce recipe is to pick one or more ingredients from the categories below, combine them, mix or stir well, and serve with your bbq cooking. You can heat it in a saucepan first if you want to, but it not necessary. Heating does blend the ingredients together well and it even amplifies some of them, but it also kills some of the punch, especially if you prefer to use fresh ingredients. These basic elements of the barbecue sauce are all that you need to be able to cook the best smoked barbecue ribs or baby back ribs on short notice with nothing more than what you already have. Try it next time you smoke ribs or barbecue smoked brisket.