On Superbowl Sunday I cooked ribs three ways: BBQ ribs on the Big Green Egg, honey mustard sous vide ribs using my Anova, and blackberry ribs in the Crock-Pot. It was one of the better meals that I’ve ever prepared, so I thought I would share some a few pics and some details about the cook.
Prep started the day before when my son and I trekked to Costco and picked up six racks of pork back ribs. As soon as we got home, I pulled out two racks of ribs and coated them liberally in a homemade rub that contained mustard powder, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, and salt. I cut the racks into sections, vacuum-sealed each section in a bag, and dropped the bags into a bath controlled by my Anova sous vide device. I left the water temperature at 155 degrees overnight for the first 9 hours and then cranked it up to 166 degrees the next morning for the next 9 hours.
Next up, I rubbed another two racks of ribs down with salt and pepper and left them sitting for about 20 minutes. Again, I chopped the racks into sections, threw each section into a Crock-Pot, and filled the pot with beef broth. I also diced some sweet onions and floated them in the broth. I turned the Crock-Pot up to medium and left them submerged for 6 hours.
After that, I grabbed the last two racks of ribs and hit them with a BBQ rub that included brown sugar, ancho chili pepper, smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, and salt. I fired my Big Green Egg up to 225 degrees using Rockwood Charcoal (which I love) with a couple of water-soaked chunks of hickory added to the lump. I put apple juice in a drip pan on top of spacers above the plate setter so the ribs would drip into it as they cooked and then I threw the ribs in my rib rack sitting on top of the grill. I flipped them over after an hour and pulled them after two hours, wrapping them individually in foil with a splash of apple juice inside and then putting the foil-wrapped ribs into an aluminum pan. Next, I removed the grill and poured the apple juice and drippings that had been in the drip pan into a pot that I left simmering on the stove. Finally, I put the grill back in place, cranked the heat up to 275 for the rest of the cook (with an assist from my DigiQ DX2), and threw the wrapped ribs back into the Egg for another 2.5 hours.
The BBQ ribs finished up first, so I dumped the liquid that had accumulated from the bottom of the aluminum pan into the prior drippings that were reducing on the stove and then wrapped the ribs in a towel to stay warm. Meanwhile, my wife and I made 3 different sauces. For the BBQ sauce, we started with the dripping reduction and added a bit of ketchup, brown sugar, and corn starch (to thicken the mixture). For the honey mustard sauce we added raw honey, dijon mustard apple cider vinegar, crushed red pepper flakes, cajun seasoning, salt, ground pepper, and corn starch. The blackberry sauce was made from blackberry jam, ketchup, brown sugar, ginger, ground pepper, and corn starch. While all three sauces were simmering on the stove, we pulled the ribs out of the sous vide bath, Crock-Pot, and aluminum pan and laid them out out baking sheets while we warmed the oven up to 300 degrees. We patted the ribs down and then poured the sauces liberally over them: BBQ on the ribs that had cooked on the Big Green Egg, honey mustard on the ribs that had cooked in the sous vide bath, and blackberry on the ribs that had cooked in the Crock-Pot. Then we threw all of the sauce-covered ribs into the oven for about 20 minutes. When we pulled them out, we let them rest for a few minutes. Finally, we served them along with some homemade mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.
The flavor profiles and the texture were spot on for the way I like my ribs. We asked guests to pick their favorite recipe and they were split pretty evenly into thirds (my favorite were the BBQ!), which I took as a good sign. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure that the ribs brought far more joy than the game.
I’ll definitely be using these recipes again!
