Cast Iron Therapy: Another taste of my summer–Root Beer BBQ Sauce Part 2

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.