Easy, Delicious Baby Back Pork Ribs

(I remembered to take a photo before I popped the ribs in the oven, but forgot afterwords.

Our friends, Jenny and Steve, introduced us to this easy way of cooking delicious pork baby back ribs. My husband and I love ribs, but while we’d eat them out they seemed like too much work to make at home. I’d heard “you need to boil them first to get the fat off them” before you bake them and that was enough to deter me. (An obvious reaction from The Lazy Chef!)

But then our friends introduced us to their way of doing ribs. Last Saturday was my husband’s birthday and for only the third time in the past 21 years, all in the past two months, I cooked up ribs for his special dinner. It’s easy to prepare, flavourful, and fall off the bone delicious!!

Here’s the process.

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. Don’t remove the membrane, remove the membrane. The choice is yours. We don’t and although our friends do it, there was absolutely no difference between the ribs our friends cooked and the ones we cooked, in terms of fall-off-the-bones tenderness. So, you guessed it, I DO NOT remove the membrane … although they certainly taste like I have.
3. Tear off at least two pieces of heavy aluminum foil, sufficient to completely enclose the ribs. (I cook each set of ribs in their own packet of foil.)
4. Some recipes suggest you should grease the foil, I don’t find this is necessary. Because the ribs are sealed in foil, the steam and any fat from the ribs keeps them from seriously sticking to the foil So, grease the foil if you like, I don’t.
5. Lay the foil flat. Rinse the ribs off, then leaving them slightly damp, lay them in the centre of the foil. The foil should be two pieces thick, to help keep juices/moisture sealed in the foil.
6. Use your favourite dry rub or make your own (see recipe on this page). Pat a layer of dry rub over ever surface of the ribs, top, and bottom. (see photo … I forgot to take a pic after they were cooked … next time.) All surfaces should be covered.
7. Fold the foil over the ribs so they are completely encased. Double/quadruple fold any edges to ensure moisture remains sealed in while ribs bake.
8. Bake ribs at 300 degrees F for 3 hours.
9. Shortly before baking time is up, if you would like to barbecue them preheat barbecue
10. Remove ribs from oven and carefully open foil wrapping.
11. Brush one side of ribs with barbecue sauce and then place ribs with sauce side down on barbecue for a few minutes.  (See recipe on this page or use your favourite barbecue sauce.)
12. While one side of ribs is cooking brush the other side (top) with barbecue sauce. Then flip ribs to barbecue second side.
13. Only barbecue ribs enough to sear and caramelize the sauce. This won’t take long. The ribs are already done when you pull them out of the oven. The barbecue and sauce makes saucy baby back ribs, rather than dry ribs.

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Dry Rub Ingredients

Dry rub ingredients below will make enough for lots of ribs! Just mix it all well and keep leftovers in a sealed container with your other seasonings.

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

3/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup paprika

1/4 cup garlic powder

2 tbsp pepper

2 tbsp ginger powder

2 tbsp onion powder

2 tbsp rosemary powder (or finely chopped rosemary)

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Barbecue Sauce

1 1/2 cups ketchup

1 1/2 cups brown sugar (packed, at least lightly)

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp Worcestershire

2 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp sea or kosher salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

4 dashes of Tobasco

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