Finger Lickin'
It is Super Bowl Sunday. Unfortunately, that means absolutely nothing to me. Sorry ya’ll, I just don’t get very excited about sporting events. I am a get-a-good-book-out-and-read OR get-in-the-kitchen-and-bake kind of girl.
With all the cold weather we are having here in North Carolina, I am really missing my flip flops and beautiful afternoons in the sun. I am a warm weather girl and I sure do miss those gorgeous, southern, breezy evenings outside with the grill all fired up and ready to go!
The smell of something cooking on the grill just makes me smile! It reminds me of times gone by when my daddy would cook on this huge smoke pit behind our house. The pit was homemade out of cinder blocks with large iron grates across the top. Many weekends were spent with friends and family over at our house grilling chicken, Boston Butts, you name it. My daddy also loved going fishing with his buddies, so alongside the smoke pit and grill you would usually find a large fryer filled with the latest catch.
All of us kids would play outside while the men were tending to the meat on the grill and the ladies were inside talking and preparing the side dishes. When the huge pit was fired up, it was an all-day (and sometimes all-night) event because everything was cooked LOW AND SLOW! And that smell? Oh, my, nothing compares to the smell of a BBQ pit!
Every time I smell BBQ cooking on a smoke pit, I am taken back to my childhood. A time when life was simple. It was all about playing outside, running through mud puddles, riding bikes until dark, swinging on the old tire swing under the huge oak tree, swimming in the pond, and building club houses in the woods!
There was no technology to distract us. It was all about being outside! We saw every sunset, ran through tobacco fields, picked peaches and ate them right there standing in the orchard, breathed fresh air every single day, jumped rope, gave out of breath from playing tag, caught fireflies and kept them inside mason jars, and became the best hide and go seek strategists around! If we did not come back inside sweaty and smelling a little funky, we did not play hard enough! It is amazing how memories flood your mind just from the smell of certain foods.
Well, we don’t have a smoke pit at my house these days, but we do have a grill. I love to grill, however, during the winter months, I simply don’t have it in me to go outside and weather the cold to cook on a grill.
So, how does one make an ordinary weekend something a little special in the middle of the winter? Well, for starters, grab a few slabs of ribs, some spices and BBQ sauce and I will show you how to do something special right inside your own kitchen!
These ribs are cooked low and slow. This is necessary to tenderize them and make the meat fall right off the bones. Once they are done, I slather them with BBQ sauce and put them under the broiler until the sauce is sticky and a little brown. While these won’t have that genuine smokiness provided by a grill or pit, they are still really delicious!
If you prefer the grilled taste, you can cook them until they are done inside the oven and after slathering them with BBQ sauce, throw them on a hot grill to brown. They are awesome that way too! Just make sure you have plenty of paper towels handy because these ribs are sticky and a little messy, but oh so good!
Fall Off The Bone - BBQ PORK RIBS
