The Pork Diaries: Found a Half Rack

Here are the finished slow cooked ribs -
with kale on the side.

With butchering bearing down on me - we're set to work the new batch of hogs next weekend - Mary and I have panicked about how full the freezer is.  By surprise, I found a forgotten half rack of ribs in there over the weekend and I came up with a quick recipe to take care of them.

Since we’ve had snow flurries off and on for the whole weekend, I didn’t feel like getting out to fire up the big unit to smoke a half rack. Instead, I decided to try putting them in the crock pot – slow cooking them – and looked up a few random recipes on the web.

More or less, the recipes went as follows – remember, this is for a half rack! –

The ribs at the start of slow cooking in the crock pot.

Cut the ribs individually.  Rub them with your favorite spice mix.  In my case, I used the last of a mix a friend gave me for Christmas, adding a little brown sugar, cumin, paprika, powdered mustard and chili powder.  On a baking sheet, put them in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Here they are, just out of the oven, before
going in to the crock pot.  (I used Sam Adams
for the half cup of beer>)

Mix up a basting sauce of your favorite BBQ sauce and ½ cup of beer.  I added a tablespoon of honey to this, playing fast and loose.  Put the sauce in the slow cooker, and put the ribs in there too when they come out of the oven.  Make sure they are covered with sauce. 

Cook them on low until the meat is falling off of the bone, which could be up to six hours, turning them halfway through.  These ribs came from the pig Pork Chop and were quite large, so I expected to go the distance. 

As I am writing this, they’re looking good – and the whole house smells great.  I can’t wait to try them!