BBQ Beef Ribs

Geesh, Cheap Bastid waited until after Labor Day to write about a fantastic dish tailor made for late summer grilling and feasting—BBQ Ribs. Well, better late than never. And, at least in our little slice of SoCal, the grocery stores always lay on Labor Day specials on ribs.

So, let’s start with just a bit of clarification before some good old boy with a big belly and belt buckle and a smoker he hauls around with an F-350 gets outraged. These are NOT barbecued ribs. No way. Barbecue by definition is low and slow on a cooker using woodsmoke to impart a flavor and texture unique to that style of cooking. So what are these? Maybe “faux” BBQ ribs? Who cares. They’re really good! And I’m calling these BBQ Beef Ribs for the “SEO”.

For the vast majority of us who do not have the tools and equipment to do a proper barbecue, we can use what we have to get about 85% of the way there and create a feast. And when your grocer has the beef ribs on special you can cook these up pretty inexpensively. Mrs. CB picked ours up at Stater Brothers on special for $1.59 a pound. You can’t get anything for $1.59 a pound anymore that’s how berserk meat prices have become this year.

We got the last package left at Staters—7 ½ lbs which was way too much for the 2 of us. We now have a 6 rib rack in the freezer (about 3 ½ lbs) for the next time we want this treat. If you’re feeding 4 do a total of about a dozen ribs.

You can make your own spice rub and you can make your own sauce. Or you can buy a spice rub and buy a bottle of sauce (and then doctor it up to taste). It doesn’t matter. I make my own rub and buy sauce which I “customize”.

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BBQ Beef Ribs

Ingredients
Beef Ribs
1-cup spice rub*
1-2 cups Barbecue sauce

Directions
Get out a “cookie sheet” and a small metal rack if you have one (if not, don’t worry about it).
Get out a large cutting board and sharp knife. Get out aluminum foil.
Set oven to preheat to 275
Line the entire bottom of the cookie sheet with foil (this will help with clean-up). Put the racks on the bottom.
Flip the ribs over so the “bottom” is up. Use the tip of the knife to slice through the “silver skin” membrane. Take a piece of paper towel in your hand and use it to get a grip on the silver skin and peel it off. If it doesn’t all peel off, make another slit and do it again. Remove as much as you can.
Take your spice rub and sprinkle it liberally on one side and then rub/pat it into the ribs, flip and do the other side.
Put the ribs on the racks on the cookie sheet. The cover the entire sheet tightly with foil.
Slide the pan of ribs into the oven.
Let them bake for about 3-4 hours until the meat has shrunk on the bones and the bones are loose in the meat. Rotate the pan hourly. At 3 hours peel back foil on top to check looseness of the bones & recover if more time is needed. Check again at 3 ½ hours.
If you’re feeding 4, you can do up 2 cookie sheets of ribs and use 2 racks in the oven. Rotate the pans on the racks every hour.
If you’re doing the ribs early, you can turn the oven off after about 3 hours and just leave the ribs in the oven for an hour or 2.
Finishing the ribs. You can do it 1 of 2 ways. If you don’t have a gas grill, remove ribs from oven, turn heat to high to preheat a bit then remove foil on top of pan, brush sauce on the top of the ribs, turn the oven to broil and slide ribs into the oven for about 4-5 minutes.
OR, turn on your grill to high, slather the ribs with sauce on top and put them top side down on the grill for about 3 minutes. Then sauce the bottom of the ribs, flip them and let them grill for about 3 minutes.
If you’re doing a couple of pans of ribs, just finish them one at a time.
Remove and get ready to serve. To serve you can cut between each rib and load up a platter or cut 2 ribs at a time—whatever you choose.

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*Spice Rub—Here’s one of my favorites.
Sweet Heat
3 parts Paprika
1 part salt
1 part chipotle/cayenne
1 part garlic
2 parts sugar
1 part cumin

To turn this into a feast, serve it up with your favorite BBQ sides—baked beans, corn on the cob, slaw, etc. Have sauce on the side and lots of paper towels. And for beverages—iced tea, lemonade or cold beer are always great “Q” drinks.

Nope, this isn’t “true”, “authentic” barbecue. But if you don’t have a slow cooker and hardwood, this will get you that classic barbecue grin from gnawing tasty beef off the bone.

The Cheap Bastid Test: Well, 3 ½ lbs of ribs at $1.59 cost $5.65. I have all the spice blend ingredients and a bottle of dollar store BBQ sauce cost $1 (which I doctored up with some Siriacha, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce to cut the sweetness a bit). So, the total came to $6.65 for 2 of us. At Phil’s BBQ it would have been about $30. I can do that math!

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!