Ribs - how should I enjoy them?

JMJ

Here's what: I'm Scandinavian (swedish). One of my next adventures will be baby back ribs. I will be able to cook them properly (after all, it is an BGE...) but I am very curious as to how you enjoy them. Favorite rubs? Sides? Condiments? Come on - hit me!

lousubcap

Knaw them right off the bone and chase with your favorite adult beverage.  Once you move past that, I'm lost.  
There are a lot of good rub recipes posted here that will set you up for a real banquet.
Btw-Welcome aboard and enjoy the journey.   

SciAggie

What @lousubcap said. This is simple food. Eat with your fingers in the company of good friends. Enjoy, laugh, and be happy. I usually make Boston baked beans and potato salad as side dishes. Sometimes I wash it down with sweet tea, sometimes cold beer.

BIll-W221

well 5 minutes ago I enjoyed them like this

ST Louis ribs rubbed with Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust mixed with Meat CHurch Honey Hog and Bacon BBQ. Peach and oak for wood at 275 for 45 minutes, flip and cook for another 45 minutes and flip one last time and cook for another 45 minutes. I sprayed with a mix of apple and jalapeno juice at each flip.

I finished 2 of the racks with a sauce from Fat Bastards but Naked was best.

Theophan

SciAggie said:

What @lousubcap said. This is simple food. Eat with your fingers in the company of good friends. Enjoy, laugh, and be happy. I usually make Boston baked beans and potato salad as side dishes. Sometimes I wash it down with sweet tea, sometimes cold beer.

Yeah, what's "simple food" can be really different for people in different countries.  Years ago, my wife made a classic Southern meal, notably including Southern fried chicken and potato salad, for people that included some people from several different Latin American countries.  She asked one of the people what he thought, and he was very nice and thanked her for a wonderful meal, but eventually admitted that he loved almost all of it, but ... the potato salad was a "little too ethnic" for him!  We've been laughing about that for YEARS!  We don't think of potato salad as "ethnic," but maybe that's because we're from here.  

So @JMJ, I do think the sides most Americans would have with ribs would be potato salad, cole slaw, and baked beans, and maybe some corn bread.  I'm sure there are recipes for these on this forum, and different people have very different ideas about what the best kind of each of those things is.  In the North, corn bread tends to be sweet and made from yellow corn, for example, whereas in the South it's usually made from white corn and is not sweet.  Cole slaw most typically is made from shredded cabbage and maybe carrots with mayonnaise, but sometimes green pepper, but some places barbecue sauce and no mayo.  Sometimes I think the simpler the food the more people fight about what's the "right" way.    I have no idea whether these would be dishes that in Sweden might be considered "simple food" or odd and exotic.  Maybe if you have a Big Green Egg you're pretty used to American food, though.

What do people in Sweden like to have with grilled or smoked pork, or do people do that, much, in Sweden?

logchief

A great rub recipe is "Memphis Dust" at amazing ribs .com.  I have a rack on right now, that's my usual go to for pork.  Going to eat up leftovers with them, potatoes Au Gratin with Gruyere, tomatoes with avocado and feta and some left over jalapeno potato salad. 

gdenby

Hello. My family has ancestors from around the Baltic, but none ever could do good American BBQ. 'Q ribs are quite simple. Rub them with a mix of brown sugar and salt, a little more sugar than salt, black pepper, some cayenne, some garlic and onion. Small quantities of many other spices, although herbs, not so much. Some mustard is good, but that can go in the sauce. There are a huge number of sides. The standard is coleslaw. Fried potatoes are next in line. After that, I suppose corn bread, then beans in a sweet or tangy sauce. Things I've never seen w. BBQ ribs: beets, sour cream, seaweed, olives, strawberries. Condiments. The primary condiment is the sauce. It can be tart, with a flavor of vinegar and/or mustard. Or sweet, with simple syrup and/or tomato sauce. And possibly hot from chilies. Myself, I don't put the sauce on the ribs, but there are many who always do. I choose the sauce to blend well w. the rib rub, and to a lesser extent, whatever side I'm serving. It is often good to put slices of soft bread, "soppin' bread" under the ribs, particularly if the ribs will be served w. sauce already on them. The bread absorbs the excess sauce, and the fat and flavors that wash off w. the sauce. Don't forget desert. Sweet potato pie w. whipped cream is splendid.

SciAggie

@theophan Nice point. Sometimes I'm guilty of seeing the world only through my own little lens. 

Tinyfish

Your favorite rub or simple salt and pepper cook low and slow till tender. Here tonight's dinner

SciAggie

@Tinyfish Those beef ribs look delicious. 

DaveRichardson

Baby backs are a favorite. My oldest daughter really enjoys them. 

I use a regular pork rub, typically sweet. A smoke at 250-300 for 2 hrs. Foil for about 90 minutes, then back out of the foil and on the grid for one more hour. Also, during that last hour, I will mop with a sauce every 15 minutes. The heat will take the sugars and carmelize then in a good sticky sweet sauce!

Theophan

SciAggie said:

@theophan Nice point. Sometimes I'm guilty of seeing the world only through my own little lens. 

We're the same!  Until that happened, neither my wife nor I would have dreamed that the meal she cooked wasn't just plain good food.  My wife at first didn't even know what the guy MEANT!  The concept of potato salad being "ethnic" just didn't compute to her.  I am reading a Japanese novel (in English translation), and was fascinated by a description of what a main character was eating for breakfast.  Not an American breakfast, that's for sure.  Some of the stuff I didn't even know what it was!  Seaweed was one of them.

I read an article in the late, dearly beloved and dearly missed Gourmet magazine before it closed, several years ago, in which Thomas Keller, I think it was, maybe America's most renowned chef, cooked a meal for some visiting Japanese chefs, famous in their own country, and they were very respectful, very polite, but admitted that some of the things he had cooked were just so odd, to them, that they had no frame of reference, no way to know whether they were exquisitely done or really not very good.  Amazing.  I've never been to one of his restaurants, but I have no doubt I'd have been in heaven.  It's just amazing to me how different we all can be, and what foods we're used to.

JMJ

Thanks for all the thoughts - short or elaborated! I am especially thankful for the cultural thoughts from @SciAggie and @Theophan. Egg, love and understanding will take us far (seriously)!
All the pictures really sets the standard, but I just want to let @gdenby know that faith in baltic BBQing will be restored 

YukonRon

Initially i use coarse grain salt and let set for an hour or so then I use my own  dry rub, but you can use any that pleases you. Then I spread peach preserves on them. I place on the big green egg at 225 and smoke with peach wood.Sides served are baked potatoes, roasted tomatoes, cole slaw, baked beans, deviled eggs, corn bread, and the beverage of your choice. Here it is sweet tea or a French rosé.
The most important task is to have fun!