Another taste of my summer–Root Beer BBQ Sauce Part 2–Ribs!

This is a follow-up to the earlier post about Root Beer BBQ Sauce. This is one of the best ways I can think of to use the barbecue sauce to impress friends, coworkers and family. With the combination of herbs, spices and the sweet juicy sauce coating your pork ribs, you’ll have yourself a great time.

Everything in place here, 4 pounds of ribs, some of my special dry rub (roughly 3 parts kosher salt, 1 part dried chervil, 1 part dried parsley and 1 part cayenne as you feel like adding), and a small container of the barbecue sauce.

Cut the ribs into manageable pieces so you can fit them onto the grill. The less pieces you have, the less times you have to use your tongs to move things around. But smaller pieces give you more maneuverability. As it was, these two rather large pieces took up quite a bit of the grill.

Then take your dry rub and coat the ribs with a nice light layer. My method is to make sure as much of the surface is touched with salt without going overboard. Cover this up…

And get your grill ready. Here I am using my friend Mike’s chimney starter, which seems to have a decorative “hole in the wall” motif. Still worked fine though. After the coals get to about this level of glow, set the coals along one side of the grill so you have a hot side and a cooler side.

Here’s Mike’s dog trying to convince me to feed him now.

If you’ve arrived later than you’d like due to perhaps an exam that took longer than expected and your ribs cooking time would be long enough to starve your guests, I recommend you have a great friend like Dominick who brought his own grill and made us his hot Italian Sausage.

He even slashed some of them in half and filled them with delicious cheese. So yes, having other prepared friends is a key part of an enjoyable backyard party.

I’ve missed a few steps here, but I was enjoying the company of friends and some good brews.

1. Place the ribs on the hot side, and get a good sear on both sides, perhaps 10 minutes a side.

2. Move the ribs to the cool side of the grill. If the grill is a bit small to completely move the ribs over, you can use some foil as I did to shield away enough heat. Cover the grill and adjust the baffles accordingly to keep the heat from going crazy, but also to keep it from dying as well. It’s not an exact science, but a timer of some kind and some beers works great during this step.

3. After an hour of that, check on your ribs and then brush one of the sides with sauce. Cover and wait about least 20 minutes. Flip over again and wait at least another 20 minutes. With the case of a hotter grill setup like this, you probably want to wait no longer than 45 minutes for this step, but the main thing to do is make sure the ribs don’t dry out or burn.  So keep an eye on them every so often and keep the ribs on the cold side, and eventually you’ll be rewarded.

And here’s the finished product. The military combat knife isn’t necessary for the carving but it’s a nice touch.

Cut through each rib for serving, make sure to grab one before they’re all gone…

…because if you blink, that’ll be your last chance to have one. Have a good grilling season everyone!

Just in Time For Summer Post! Making Ginger Ale part I

After a bit of a hiatus, a return to blogging. Lots of things happened, namely living with a family going on a diet. With such caloric restrictions in place, it's hard to pursue truly grand, rich things as is my inclination.

In the meantime, I've managed to escape a diet restricted eating regime temporarily to hopefully have some good material for a few posts. 

The inspiration for this post has been a fascination with ginger beer, ever since discovering the Moscow Mule from a manga about, well, cocktails. A Moscow Mule is vodka, lemon or lime juice and topped with a healthy pour of ginger beer. It is refreshing and has a good kick from the soda as well as the ginger. A perfect summer drink really! 

After coming upon this recipe for ginger ale through the comments on The Paupered Chef's post on Ginger Beer, an opportunity to pursue something great came about! So here it is. Seems to me the biggest differences between Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale is that ginger beer involves the use of heated water. I'll give that the try next time, but this time, the instructions for a Professor of Biology are good enough for me.

First the setup. Sugar, yeast, ginger, a lemon. The smaller fruit is a key lime, since our lemon's are Meyer's and not as tart, so I wanted to offset that a little.

A cup of sugar and 1/4 tsp of yeast is funneled into a 2 liter plastic bottle. 

Grate fresh ginger until you get 1.5 tablespoons of the wonderfully pungent stuff, and put it into a measuring cup or some other easy to pour container. 

Squeeze a lemon into it! Then pour this into the 2 liter.

And wash everything into the bottle with good fresh water.

Right now I'm keeping it in the bathtub in case of explosions, and will check it until the bottle is hard, a sign that things are at their limit. Once that's done, it's going into the fridge. I'll keep you posted on the results!