One More for the Bucket List

A couple of weeks ago young sis (the one that is on the verge of being a 1/2 century old) wrote a post called the Bucket List. It was a good post with everybody making up their own list of places they would like to go or things they would like to do. I made up my list with everybody else but I forgot one item. One very important item, at least to me. Someday I would like to enter a barbecue rib cook-off.

I have already entered one cooking contest but that was for chili. It was for non-traditional chili but never the less I still won. All this did was give me some confidence that I could enter a cooking contest and have a decent chance. It is because of this I thought someday if I ever get a barbecue rib recipe I thought would have a chance with I might give a contest a shot. I have yet to come up with the "winning" recipe but I think I may be getting closer.

I have been cooking ribs (by the way my preferred rib is baby back) for the last three years or more. I have tried cooking them a lot of different ways starting with rubs, marinades, and nothing at all. I have done them in the oven, on the grill and in the smoker. I have made so many types of barbecue sauces I should have a taste testing lab set up in the house. The guinea pigs in these experiments have been the wife and the kids but mainly the wife for the last year. I use local restaurants for comparing my ribs to and anymore the restaurant ribs are a disappointment so I think I may finally be making some headway in these comparisons.

My preferred method of cooking ribs is still out on my smoker. I don't use a cold smoke where you inject a lot of smoke into the ribs because I do not like a lot of smoke flavor in my ribs. I prefer to use charcoal and just a little bit of apple wood for flavor. I cook them at 225 degrees for two hours and forty five minutes or until they just start to pull away from the bone. After this they go on the charcoal side with sauce and cook for about 3-5 minutes per side.

The bbq sauce I am making right now is a ketchup based sauce which I guess would be called a "Kansas City" type bbq sauce. If I gave out the recipe on this post I would have to kill everybody who reads this post because after all if I am going to enter a bbq contest I can't be giving out my secrets. I would be willing to give out samples if anybody is interested so I could get some feedback on what other people think.

I did cook ribs today although I did them in the oven and finished them off on the grille. It is to cold outside to keep the smoker up to temperature for 3 hours right now anyway. (If anybody wants a no fail way to cook ribs in the oven let me know and I will share with you how. They will come out perfectly cooked every time.)

Overall I would give the ribs I cooked today a 4 out of 5. One of the two best sets of ribs I have cooked in the oven. I need to work on the bbq sauce a little more because it is not quite where I want it to be yet. It will also help when I can cook the ribs on my smoker this summer. And maybe if I remember the salt and pepper next time it will help.

I was afraid I was going backwards for a while with my rib cooking but after my last couple of tries I think I may be getting closer to that contest and crossing one more item off the bucket list.