Bourbon rubbed ribs with baked beans in a bread bowl, straws fries, with fried grits & pickles.
Nothing like ribs, just nothing in the BBQ world beats them in my opinion. My family, and I, like them just before the fall off the bone stage, even a little bit falling off is good. My rib cook is, like most of you accompanied by traditional sides of baked beans, but I made bread bowls to serve them in. I made the potato fries sliced very thin on my mandolin so that they are what is called straws, so much flavor in each one with a crunchy bite. Being a southern boy by birth, I love grits, but this time I made in a way not normally done. I made the grits, then poured them into a pan to refrigerate overnight and then sliced them less than little finger thin, dipped in egg, floured and fried…….ah, finger food out of grits. With the small mix I also fried up a few dill pickles. I only made a small batch of each, mainly to add a different crisp and taste mixture to the dish. I highly recommend the pickles as the acidity of them make for a wonderful explosion in the mouth eating BBQ.
For my ribs I tried a few new techniques to add deeper flavor. I cross cut the rubs just a bit so that the rub could more deeply absorb into the meat. First I lightly salted the ribs as I want that next to the meat, then crosscut (hopefully it shows in the picture) and then wet the ribs with Makers Mark, rubbing it into the cuts, and then applied my rub. These were wrapped and placed in the fridge overnight to meld the flavors.
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For my baked beans I cut bell peppers, onions, and jalapeno’s and sweated them in the skillet before adding the beans. To this I added additional flavors such as brown sugar, worchestershire, salt, pepper, garlic powder, dry mustard, and BBQ sauce. This was placed on the grill in an iron skillet to add some smokey flavor. After the cuttings off of the ribs were done, some of this was cut up and then added to the beans to take the taste up to the next level, that only us BBQ’ers can do. These were served in the biscuit bowls. The biscuit bowls are simply made by placed a round of dough over the bottom of a greased muffin pan, cooked for 5-6 minutes and then slide them off the pan, turn over and spoon the beans into the bowl. Great way to plate…..eat the bowl with the beans.
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Side piece of the slab cut up and put into the beans, then stirred up. Add great flavor to the bean pot.
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At the three hours mark, I pulled the ribs to foil them with the usual mix of brown sugar, butter, and tiger sauce. Instead of adding a liquid such as apple juice, I opted for more Maker’s Mark. Heck, the alcohol burns off, right??? Hopefully not! I usually only foil for about 90 minutes rather than the usual two hours, just seems to work better for me as I cook in the 250-275 zone. Here’s a picture at the 3 hour mark.
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When I unwrap the ribs for the final glaze cook, I poured the juices from the foil back into the bean pot.....adding even more flavor.
A couple of weeks I posted a hamburger thread in the photo gallery and had several requests regarding the potato straws that I did. They are so good that my son, who came to eat, requested them so had no choice but to cook them despite the fact I already was planning on the fried grits and pickles. Anyway,, out came the mandolin and with it a pile of potato to soak for several hours to cleanse them of starch for better frying, which I once again did outside on the Weber Genesis burner. Here's a pic of the fries cooking on the Genesis and the smoker finishing up the ribs and beans.
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Plated up with ribs, beans in a bowl, fires, with fried grits and pickle......and something to wash it down with.
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And of course, a final shot of the star of the show. Crosscutting the rubs allowed all of the flavors to absorb deeper into the ribs......I will continue to do them this way as the eaters all expressed a more powerful flavor of this set of ribs..........thanks for viewing.......
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cook for Bigbill....too clean
...................d