Daughter and I needed to find a way to make tasty, tender pork ribs within these constraints:
- Only available heat is a four burner range, a standard (residential size) oven, a large flattop, a normal size grill
- Total time available for all prep and cooking is preferably 2 hours, 3 max
- Process has to be fairly low skill, able to be done by kids without much cooking experience
- No expensive or unusual ingredients, only what can be easily ordered from Sysco
- Feed 140 people in a mountain camp
Here is what I came up with.
1. Pork baby back ribs, cut up, pre salt.
2. Heat large pot(s) of salted water, add Better Than Bouillon (or some other boullion type flavor) and chopped onions, should taste like a strong soup base and be enough liquid to cover the ribs.
3. While the water is heating, heat about 1/2" of oil in a pan and brown the meaty side of the ribs. (Be nice to skip this step, so I'll try again.)
4. When water is boiling, put in ribs and reduce to a slow bubbling boil. Cook for 1.5 hours. (Be nice to reduce to 1.0 hour, I'll try that too.) Meanwhile, heat the grill.
5. In large workbowl, put plenty of BBQ sauce. I used half commercial BBQ sauce and half commercial Yoshida sauce. I figure that can be ordered in cases from Sysco. Sauce should be somewhat thin, not thick.
6. Remove ribs from pot and move to bowl to dip and coat.
7. Grill the coated ribs. Start with the meat side up, then dip each piece back in the bowl of sauce, then grill with meat side down, then dip again, grill some more. Only need about 5 minutes grilling on high heat, just to get some char and color. The ribs may fall apart a little while they are grilled, but each dip in the sauce recoats the exposed meat.
8. Result is very tender, tasty, looks pretty nice. I think it is good enough for the purpose.
When I've done this before, the process was marinate, simmer, refrigerate overnight, deep fry, coat with reduced marinade, wok fry. The process I did tonight is a quicker version of that.
Any suggestions for a better, faster, or easier process?