Ina Garten’s Secret to Cooking Good Ribs

A candy and savory chew of fall-apart tender ribs is sort of synonymous with summer time. This handheld minimize of meat is undeniably one of many gadgets we most frequently affiliate with grilling and outside cooking, but it surely’s additionally probably an merchandise that fewer house cooks try in comparison with scorching canines or hamburgers. That’s as a result of — and I admit that is true for me too — cooking ribs might be intimidating.

Not like a scorching canine or hamburger, you possibly can’t simply throw a rack of ribs on the grill for a couple of minutes. As an alternative, a thick rack of ribs is often cooked at low and sluggish temperatures to interrupt down the collagen and connective tissues within the meat and to render out fats, yielding a superbly tender texture. (The exception to this could be kalbi — grilled Korean-style quick ribs, that are thinly sliced lengthwise and cook dinner in a short time.)

Having a smoker makes slow-cooking ribs at a managed temperature a lot simpler. However most of us don’t personal a smoker, nor will we need to make a home made foil packet for a makeshift smoker, which suggests we’re laboring over the grill, monitoring its warmth, and guessing how lengthy to cook dinner the ribs.To repair this chaotic course of and get evenly cooked ribs each single time, cookbook writer, Meals Community star, and culinary icon Ina Garten has a straightforward methodology that delivers excellent outcomes with minimal effort.

How Ina Garten cooks ribs

The Barefoot Contessa’s technique for making barbecued ribs is probably the most hands-off approach you possibly can strive. In a clip shared on Instagram earlier this yr, Garten explains that “What I do is I sort of cheat slightly bit. I cook dinner them within the oven till they’re falling aside and scrumptious after which end them on the grill.”

To start out, the internet hosting knowledgeable takes two racks of child again ribs seasoned with salt and pepper and locations them on a foil-lined sheet pan. She coats the ribs with a home made barbecue sauce (though you might actually use store-bought sauce to save lots of extra effort and time), covers them in additional foil, and bakes the meat within the oven at 350 levels Fahrenheit for roughly an hour and a half.

About 40 minutes earlier than the meat is able to come out of the oven, Garten begins heating up her grill. As soon as the ribs are “falling aside and scrumptious,” she takes them out of the oven, brushes them with extra barbecue sauce, and says, “I simply sort of char them on the grill, so that you get all that nice barbecue taste.”

You would additionally refrigerate the baked ribs and grill them proper earlier than serving, making this a superb choice for entertaining in the summertime. Simply be sure to get the grill scorching sufficient to go away fantastically charred marks on the tender rib meat and so as to add some smoky taste.

Can you employ this methodology to cook dinner different cuts of meat?

Ribs aren’t the one minimize of meat that may be slow-cooked within the oven after which completed on the grill for further taste. Be at liberty to experiment with different proteins that profit from low and sluggish cook dinner time, like brisket or lamb shanks. Simply be sure that the meat is cooked till tender earlier than you sear it on the grill, however nonetheless agency sufficient to carry its form. This methodology would probably work greatest with cuts which have a bigger floor space, which helps you take advantage of the flavorful grill marks.