Slow Cooker Ribs

On the slow cooker things, I tried a new pork ribs recipes this weekend, and it worked out pretty decent.

I love pork ribs. I know they are absolutely horrible for you--there are many healthy cuts of pork, and ribs are not one of them. So this isn't a dish that fits my healthy criteria, but I always make sure I serve them with healthy and low fat side dishes to try to balance out the scales, and never eat more than 3 ribs at a sitting (the second part is harder than the first).

I do ribs in both the oven and the slow cooker; usually I just rub them down with a good pork rub and cook them with Coke.

I like to slow cook meats with Coke, although the effect is not what I think most people expect when they hear 'Coca-Cola sauce'. When I first tried cooking ribs in Coke, I think I expected it to reduce to a thick syrup. Not really, especially not in the slow cooker. It will thicken a little in the oven, but in the end, Coke mostly is just water, and that shows in the sauce you get (also, what water evaporates off largely gets replaced by the liquid fat that cooks off the ribs). In the slow cooker, you don't lose much water at all, so any sauce you use is going to be just about as thin at the end of the day as it was at the beginning.

Even though it wasn't the delightfully syrupy sauce I was expected, i still do like Coke, partly because I am convinced that the carbonation tenderizes the meat.

However, I have still been searching for something a little thicker, a little sweeter, and with a little more heat--which I found.

This time, for my slow cooker ribs, I used this sauce:

10 ounces hot jalapeno jelly
1 half bottle A-1
1 tablespoon bottled minced garlic
1 half large Vidalia onion

I got the idea to use the steak sauce/jalapeno jelly combo from e-mealz, an awesome recipes service that I recommend. Frankly, I had never heard of jalapeno jelly, but it sounded good. I melted together the jelly and steak sauce, poured it over the ribs, and then added the onion and garlic. The sauce came out divine--sweet, rich, and with just a perfect amount of heat (not too much for the kids--Calliope loved the meat).

I did something different with the ribs--usually I put them in the crock pot raw, but this time I broiled them--10 minutes on each side about 5 inches from the top first. For two reason--one, I wanted to try cooking some beans in the pot with the ribs, and I thought it might be good to cook off just a bit of fat first so the beans wouldn't be swimming in grease (also, it does help make ribs a tad more healthy). I also thought the crispy skin would be nice--tender ribs are wonderful, but they are nice when contrasted with a crunchy skin.

However, I still cooked them for 8;30 hours, even though I had broiled them first. And it was too long--the ribs were still yummy, but drier than they should have been I think just 7 hours after broiling would have been ideal.

I actually find that 7 hours is normally the perfect time for most crock pot dishes, unless you have a whole chicken or a very big pork shoulder. Despite what some say, meat can definitely get too dry in a crock pot, and my family is very picky about super-tender meat.

I also made a mistake with the beans. I like to cook with dry beans whenever possible, since they are healthier, cheaper, and tastier than canned varieties (they soak up what you cooked them with; in cans, they've just soaked up salt). You have to be careful, though, since beans do need a LOT of cooking. Normally, a crock pot is a perfect place for dry beans, since you are cooking for a long time in a lot of liquid anyway.

However, there are a lot of ingredients that can make beans skins get tough and keep the beans from getting as tender as they should be. Apparently, steak sauce and jalapeno jelly are two of those ingredients.

The beans were still delicious, but the texture was a bit off--they were just a tad firmer than they should have been.

When I do this again--and I will, because as I said, I am sold on the sauce--I am still going to broil the ribs (I do like that crispy skin and slightly lower fat content), but I am ponly going to cook the ribs for 7 hours. And I will still use dry beans, but I am going to soak them overnight first, to just make sure they get all the way where they should be.