Great Ribs from the Oven
This is a recipe-in-progress, but it's reliable as it is. You won't wish you hadn't followed it. As is so often the case, the recipe that inspired it was a limited blueprint, prescribing ingredients and oven timing but omitting several practical issues. Let's face it: if you're barbecuing ribs by the pool, you can make a big mess. If you're roasting ribs in the oven, and then dining on them in an ordinary New York apartment, you can't.
The recipe will yield enough ribs to feed five or six people. Consider filling finger bowls with slices of lemon and water.
Mark Bittman's recipe for making barbecued ribs in the oven, which comes from How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food (Macmillan, 1998) - is a new edition in the works? - doesn't tell you everything you need to know. The marinade is great, but the execution is limited to a specification of oven temperatures and times, plus a directive to apply the marinade during the last half hour or so. What, you say? Brush on a marinade while the ribs are in the oven? Well, Mr Bittman doesn't talk about marinade. He talks about something to brush onto the ribs during the final hour of cooking. I call it a marinade because I let the ribs soak in it for a few days before dinner. From the start, I knew that the execution part needed work.
If you can, you'll order two racks of St Louis-style spareribs. I don't know what makes the St Louis style great, and, frankly, I didn't find this explanation all that helpful. But St Louis-style ribs are much cheaper than the baby back ribs that places like Tony Roma's serve. The racks may come folded, letter-style; if they do, unfold them.
Now make the marinade, which is always simpler than I remember. You'll need a jar of marmalade and a few condiments: Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, mustard, and vinegar. Combine a tablespoon of each of the condiments with the jar of marmalade in a small food processor and blend. Pour the marinade atop the ribs in their stout bag. Seal the bag with a twist-tie, and then massage the bag so that the ribs are completely filmed in the marmalade. Store in the refrigerator overnight.
Four or five hours before you plan to sit down to dinner, preheat the oven to 300º. Place each rack of ribs in a roasting pan, and, when the oven is hot, roast the ribs for about two hours. At the end of that period, turn the heat up to 500º for ten to fifteen minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and let the ribs cool. They will be almost, but not quite, done. One of the racks may have browned a bit more than the other; if so, remove the browned ribs and let the other rack cook for a little longer.
As soon as you can handle the racks, take a kitchen scissors and cut through the meat between the bones, tossing each rib into a large baking dish. (You may find it handier to slice the ribs with a knife, but I don't.) By cutting the ribs into individual pieces, you not only make them much easier to handle at the table but you also expose more meat to the oven's searing temperature, which makes for greater flavor. (You also render just a bit more of the fat, which is a good thing, too.)
When it's time for dinner, put the baking dish into the hot oven (500º) for ten minutes, or until the ribs are done the way you like them.
Keep your eye on the ribs and take note of what timing works best for your oven. One of the 'secrets' of this recipe is that, by calling for cooking in advance, it allows you to focus your attention on the searing process, where minutes make a big difference.
Serve with sweet potatoes in one form or another - fries are always great, if not exactly virtuous - and a tangy salad made with sprouts.
