I love messy, sticky, “get it all over your face” barbecue. I don’t love super sweet sauces and dry, shredded to a pulp meat. So this recipe contains neither of those things. Instead of the typical pork butt/shoulder, I pulled meat from the mother of all ribs, the spareribs and instead of gloppy, super sweet sauce, I was inspired by a commenter to use coffee as the base of the sauce, for an earthy, mellow and really full-flavored sauce.
Spareribs are more fatty (and I mean that in a good way), have some odd cartilage pieces floating about and can be a little difficult to eat, but the taste is like no other. So instead of taking the good with the bad…let’s just take the good. Mix the tender, moist rib meat together with a marinade that doubles as a barbecue sauce and you’ve got a recipe for a messy, sticky good time.
Ingredients
- ~5 lbs pork spare ribs, untrimmed
- 3/4 c brewed coffee
- 1/4 c molasses
- 1/4 c dijon mustard
- 1/4 c wheat-free soy sauce or coconut aminos
- 1 T worsterchire sauce
- 1 T hot sauce
- 1/3 c tomato sauce or ketchup
Method
Preheat your oven to 300°F. Position one oven rack in the center of the oven and another below it, with enough space in between to allow for a pan to fit. Lay the ribs on a sheet pan. Whisk together everything but the tomato sauce/ketchup. Reserving 1 cup of marinade, pour the marinade over the pork, massaging and rubbing, making sure to coat both sides. Let the ribs come to room temperature, and bast the marinade every so often, until they do.
Place the ribs meaty side down, bony side up. Cover, as tightly as you can, with aluminum foil. Place them on the middle rack of your oven. Fill a pan (cake, roasting, whatever) with water. Place that on the lower rack. This will create steam and keep the ribs moist.
Let the ribs go, until the meat falls off the bone, about 3-4 hours.
Once the meat is cool enough to handle, pull it.
To make the barbeque sauce…
Pour the reserved marinade into a sauce pot and add the tomato sauce/ketchup. Let it simmer and reduce by about half. Taste and adjust the seasoning however you want…more hot sauce, more molasses, etc.
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