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Pan-Barbecued Spareribs
Cut spareribs so they lie flat in baking pan and cover with a hot barbecue sauce of chopped onion, catsup, vinegar, sugar, peppers, and anything else you say not forgetting the Worcestershire and chili powder.
This is a sketch rather than a formula: the author assumes you know what a barbecue sauce is and how long ribs take. The two things left unsaid are the oven temperature and the time, and both matter more than the sauce.
- Oven temperature and timeNo heat is specified. Ribs want a slow oven, 300-325F, covered with foil for the first 1 1/2 to 2 hours, then uncovered for the last 20-30 minutes to set the glaze. A hot oven will tighten the meat long before the connective tissue gives up.
- Doneness is not a temperature you look upPork ribs are tender at about 195-203F internal, well past food-safe, because the collagen needs that range to break down. The practical test is a toothpick sliding between the bones with no resistance, or the rack bending until the surface cracks when lifted at one end.
- Sugar burnsA catsup-and-sugar sauce scorches on the exposed edges of bone and pan. Either add the sauce for the final 30-40 minutes only, or braise in it covered and reduce it separately at the end.
- CatsupCommercial ketchups vary in sweetness and body, so taste before adding the full amount of sugar. A serviceable starting sauce for one full rack: 1 cup ketchup, 1/3 cup cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 small onion chopped fine, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire, 2 teaspoons chili powder.
- "Peppers"Ambiguous in the original and could mean black pepper, ground red pepper, or fresh green peppers chopped in with the onion. Any of the three works; fresh peppers should be softened in a little fat first or they stay raw-tasting in a braise.
- Cutting the ribs"So they lie flat" most likely means dividing a full rack into two or three slabs to fit the pan. Trim the flap and any loose fat, and cut between bones rather than through them.
- YieldFigure roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of untrimmed spareribs per person. Full racks vary widely in weight, so weigh what you buy and divide accordingly.
Pan-barbecuing is the compromise a cook makes when there is no pit: the ribs braise in their own fat and a sharp tomato sauce, and the oven does the work that smoke and long indirect heat would otherwise do. The sauce described here -- ketchup, vinegar, sugar, onion, Worcestershire, chili powder -- belongs to the sweet tomato style often associated with Kansas City, and sauces of this kind spread through American home cooking in the middle of the twentieth century, helped by the fact that every one of those ingredients sat on a grocery shelf year round. Spareribs were long a cheap cut, taken from the side of pork after the bacon was cut away, which is why they turn up in cookery aimed at feeding many people for little money.