This is my best recipe for juicy, tender, fall-off-the-bone ribs!It also gathers every tip and secret for getting the same wonderful result every time using different spices and sauces, because the single most important thing in achieving heavenly ribs – the kind that make you lean back in your chair and say „oh, yes!” – is not some mystical ingredient at all, but the method.
Fundamentally – oven-baked ribs are a very simple dish that takes little work, because most of the cooking consists of shuffling and hovering by the oven waiting until you can finally eat; in short, the hardest work is the waiting. It is also a great choice for every meat lover who adores aromatic, extraordinarily tender ribs but has already closed the barbecue season. Ribs in the oven stay a hit in every season, in any weather and under any circumstances!
(For the ribs you can use either your own spice rub and sauce or, if you are short on time, buy a rib rub and a ready-made BBQ sauce)
Or…
The secrets of the best oven-baked ribs
My own practice has shown that there are only a few very simple rules to follow if you want a great result every time. But if I had to single out rule no. 1, it would undoubtedly be what in English we would call „low and slow”. Right, let's run through them all quickly:
- The ribs. Choosemoderately meaty or meatyribs. The ones colloquially called „skinny” will cook through quickly, shrink and, put simply, leave you nothing to enjoy. Equally, very meaty ribs take longer to cook, so adjust and keep an eye on the cooking time.One more important criterion when choosing ribs – fat.Fat matters enormously if you want tender, juicy meat. Where you can, always choose ribs with nicely distributed fat, and make sure there is neither too much of it nor too little. If it looks like too much to you, you can always trim it, but if there is too little, the meat can come out on the dry side.
- The membrane.Depending on where you buy your ribs, there may or may not be a membrane on the underside right against the bone. If there is, do peel it off!Removing the membrane is what makes sure the cooked meat falls off the bone rather than being hard to chew!
- Rinsing. Before cooking the meat, rinse it under cold water, because small fragments of bone from the butchering often stay on the ribs.Once rinsed, you must dry it thoroughly with kitchen paper!Then you can rub the ribs with whatever spices you like.
- Cooking. As I already mentioned,they need to be cooked low and slow. About 2.5 hours would be enough to cook roughly 1kg of ribs through properly, but if you want fall-off-the-bone ribs you will need 3-4 hours, depending on the weight. Cooking temperature – 135°C.If you want genuinely tasty ribs, never boil them!Boiling them in water draws out all the flavour. The stock will be excellent, but the ribs – tasteless.
- The sauce. Sauce goes on only once the ribs are fully cooked. The sauced ribs are moved one shelf higher in the oven, the heat is turned up, and they cook for a few minutes until the sauce caramelises nicely.
In short, the process for the best oven-baked ribs goes…
- Remove the membrane.
- Dry the ribs and rub them generously with your favourite spices. Wrap them in foil.
- Cook at 135°C for 3-4 hours, depending on the weight.
- Take the cooked ribs out of the foil, brush them with sauce and cook in a hot oven one shelf higher until the sauce caramelises.
The great thing is that we can bake different ribs every time simply by changing the spices or the sauce. For the rub you can use any number of spice blends, from a classic BBQ or smoky mix to a spicy Texas rub or plain salt and pepper. There are just as many variations for the sauce – from shop-bought BBQ to a homemade sticky rib sauce. The possibilities are endless. Either way, today I am sharing my recipe for wonderful oven-baked ribs!
