Oven Braised Sweet Baby Ray Ribs

I recently wrote about some of the frugal deals we found during our last trip to Sam's Club. While warehouse shopping is not for everyone, a considerable amount of money can be saved, more than enough to recoup the cost of membership even if you don't buy any food.  I am very picky about what foods I do buy there because some foods (eg. fresh fruits) can be a problem trying to bring them back into Canada and some purchases like dairy, meat and poultry have restrictions as to how many pounds can enter when returning to Canada.  Compounding the problem is US prices have come closer and in some cases exceed the Canadian price.  In general (for us), commercially canned foods (which we buy very little of), most bread  cannot be bought cheaper at Sam's Club and dried cereals are getting rather close to Canadian prices.

A couple of days ago, I was watching FoodNetwork Canada, when three of the programs showed ways to cook ribs.  There was no denying it, the craving for ribs was sparked.  I pulled out a large rack of ribs from the freezer, grabbed a bottle of Sweet Bayb Ray's Barbecue Sauce (2 - 40 oz bottles $5.98 at Sam's Club) from the pantry and the stainless steel roaster.  Dinner was in the makings!

Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce is an award winning sauce that we discovered at a ribfest.  It is one of our favourite purchased barbecue sauces.  The deep, spicy, smokey rich flavour is perfect for using with any cut of pork but it was perfected for use on ribs.  The trick for cooking pork spare ribs is long and slow.  I like to add a bit of moisture during this process before adding the sauce later.  The ribs can be seasoned if desired but this time I didn't.  They went into the oven at 200ºF to slowly cook for the afternoon (about 5 hours).  About 4 PM I poured half a bottle (about 20 oz) of Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce over the ribs and let them cook at 275ºF for one hour then raised the heat to 400ºF, removed the lid and cooked for 20 minutes to caramelize the sauce a bit.

Ribs cooked in the oven this way are mouth-watering delicious with wonderfully tender, fall-off-the bone texture.  The caramelized crust give a texture similar to that found on ribs cooked on the grill.  I served the ribs simply with a side of rice and mixed vegetables.  We are eating more rice now that I stopped using the rice cooker.  I am quite pleased that I finally learned how to cook rices on the stovetop.  The results are considerably better than rice cooked in the rice cooker!  I now longer need to add a bit of butter when cooking rices like I had to do with the rice cooker and I can still use a wide variety of liquids for cooking the rice.

It was a delicious, easy to prepare meal with the taste of summer just perfect for a chilly, late winter's day.  Spring is in the air so we will be doing a lot more outdoor grilling. Tonight we are gilling steaks on the charcoal side of our grill.  Gardening is just around the corner so there will be more canning to do.  I'm looking forward to getting busier in the kitchen as well as enjoying more opportunities for entertaining in our home!

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