Spare A Rib Or Two

I was cooking for men. I needed to make man-shaped foods to feed manly menfolk.

What's manly? Ribs!

What's more manly than ribs? Ribs drowned in beer!

I made these with my own BBQ sauce, which is pretty tangy. The great thing about making your own sauce is that you can make it to your palate. Add coffee or cayenne pepper or liquid smoke or, or, or...

Beer Drowned Spare Ribs With Homemade BBQ Sauce

--Rack of ribs (I like St. Louis Style because it's meaty, mmm)
--salt & pepper
--Lots o' dark beer (I used Porter)
--Onion, peeled and quartered
--BBQ sauce (recipe below, though bottled works just fine)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Rub the rack of ribs, on both sides, with salt and pepper.


Cover in onions and beer. Place foil over the top of the pan and cook for 1 hour.


While the ribs cook you can make the BBQ sauce.

Homemade BBQ Sauce
--1 cup ketchup
--1/4 cup tomato paste
--1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
--1 TBSP dijon mustard
--1 TBSP maple syrup

Now add whatever you like...I added the following:
--1 TBSP bourbon
--splash soy sauce
--splash Worcestershire sauce
--garlic
--shake of onion powder
--shake of cayenne pepper


Mix all ingredients in a sauce pot and heat on low, stirring to mix.

Heat ONLY 5 minutes until the sauce is all melted.


When the hour is up on the ribs remove from the oven. Remove foil and discard.

Turn oven temperature down to 300 degrees.

Pour out the beer (sob!) and slather in BBQ sauce on both sides of the rack.


Return to the oven, uncovered, for another hour to hour-and-a-half (until meat is tender and will be easy to cut apart. Feel free to remove from oven halfway through and douse with more sauce.

Remove from oven. Allow a few minutes to cool before slicing ribs apart.

Use wetnaps...