Melt in your mouth and mess up your hands…

Every time ribs are on sale, I buy a slab or two and frequently, some go straight to the freezer. With an upcoming project, freezer space is at a premium so time to make some room.

My basic pattern for rib cooking is to use a dry rub of seasonings, place the ribs on a bed of sliced onions, then put the dutch oven on a ring of coals with another ring on the lid. The best way for tender results of most meats is cooking slowly over time. While they will be fully cooked in an hour or less, longer in this case equals more tender. I’ve found that the regular Kingsford briquettes tend to give about 45 minutes, or more of good heat. I’ll usually have a couple of hours on the ribs by the time they come off of the heat so the coals get changed a few times.

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Usually everything we prepare is cooked directly in the dutch oven. Sometimes though, there are times we’ll use another pan in the oven. Maybe it’s a cleaning issue where water is limited or possibly plans to put a second course on to cook when the ribs are done so quick change outs make sense.

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Onions – the edible trivet. Regardless of cooking directly in the pot or in an inserted pan, a bed of onions does several things to help. First, the onions provide a gap between the heat at the bottom of the pan and the meat and that prevents sticking and possible scorching if the heat is not exactly as we expect. The other thing is they add a great flavor and can serve as a sauce thickener as they cook down.

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While there are not as many ways of cooking in dutch ovens as Forrest Gump can recite ways to prepare shrimp, there are quite a few. Food can be baked, roasted, stewed, braised, simmered, boiled, and fried in these vessels depending on what the need is for the particular recipe. The heavy, well fitted lid of a dutch oven does a great job of sealing in the moisture and sometimes its results may compare to a pressure cooker as it can utilize both heat and steam.

Traditionally, when smoked, ribs are cooked slowly at a low temperature with a dry heat. Our ribs, prepared in the dutch oven, are cooked in a moist heat at around 350°. The moist heat holds in the flavors and both tenderizes and speeds up the cooking time. There’s a difference between moist heat though and boiling or stewing. The former holds the flavor and makes for a melt in your mouth tender result. Boiling or stewing actually submerges the meat in the liquid in the pot and for ribs, that’s not what we’re looking for which is why we use the onions as a trivet or stand the ribs on end.

Pots are over a ring of coals and the lids are likewise loaded and ready to top things off.

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After about 45 minutes, more coals were added by being placed between those already burning and lit by those already in use. We’re about half way there.

Every time the lid is removed, both heat and steam are released. For those times that we need to slow down the cooking process a bit or reduce some of the liquid, that’s great. Take the lid off too often though and things may slow down more than desired, just like our ovens at home.

Since we don’t use any sugar in our dry rub, this pot of ribs complies with limited sugar diets. That’s important in our world as we like to eat a Whole30 style a couple of times a year. When these were cooked though, Whole30 was not on our minds so after about 1 1/2 hours in we topped the ribs with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce. (Good news for folks with dietary restrictions is this sauce, and several other brands are Gluten Free.)

When we started to pull supper from the pot, the meat just slid off the bones so on this batch, we filled a pan with rib meat .

Those who like to gnaw on a bone may be disappointed, but those of us who are fine shoveling in boneless, melt in your mouth rib meat, are fine.