Smoked Spare Ribs with Chipotle-Orange BBQ Sauce

Since it was such a nice weekend, I decided that I wanted to spend some time outside.  Busting out the smoker gives a great opportunity to slow cook some food, have a few beverages and read a book.  The only thing you have to do is get up every once and a while to stoke the fire, add some more charcoal and wood chunks.

I tried something new today.  In the past I have gone straight to the smoker with my ribs.  Today, I decided to experiement by starting them in a 225 degree oven to steam them for 2 hours to be certain that they would fall off the bone.  I cut my rib racks in half, used a homemade rub to season them (salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, fresh ground mustard, fresh ground coriander, cayenne, paprika, thyme and brown sugar) and added them to a turkey roaster with a beer poured beneath the rack to create steam.  Cover the ribs in aluminum foil and place in oven.



Steaming Setup

While the ribs are steaming, this is a good time to make a bbq sauce.  It is an almost effortless process, and I highly recommend people make their own.  Remember, I never measure, but I will try to guess amounts below.  As I go, I taste my sauce to see if its too spicy, sweet, tart, etc and then add other ingredients to find a balance I am happy with.


Chipotle-Orange BBQ Sauce

- 1 medium red onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 can chipotle peppers with adobo sauce
- 2 cups ketchup
- 1 tablespoon molasses
- juice of 2 oranges
- 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon of yellow mustard

Roughly chop the onions and garlic.  They will be pureed later, so don't be concerned with cut size.  Add onions to a sauce pot and sautee in some olive oil.  Cook the onions for 5 minutes on medium heat.  I add garlic, once I see that the onions have a decent amount of carmelization on them.  At this point you have cooked out some liquid so its safe to salt them.  Cook the garlic for 2 minutes, and then add the can of chipotles to stop the garlic from browning.  Stir ingredients to combine, and cook for a few more minutes.  Since the chipotles are the main ingredient, I give them a few minutes to cook in the pan and blend with the sweet of the onions.  Add the ketchup, molasses, orange juice and vinegar.  Cook for 20 minutes.  Using a stick blender, puree the sauce.  (You can use a regular blender if necessary, but do it in batches and use care when blending hot liquids)  Finally add them mustard and stir to combine.  Now you have to taste.  Is it too spicy?  Add some molasses or honey for sweet.  Add more vinegar or orange for more tang.  If your mixture is too thick for you, add some beer.  If it is too thin, reduce it on low until you are ready to use it.  There is no way to mess this up, many sauces can be fixed if you know what to do.  It takes practice!

Smoke the Ribs

Once the ribs are done in the oven, coat with more rub if you accidentally knocked some off with tongs.  The rub will crust to the ribs in the smoking process.  Add to your smoker and smoke for 4 hours minimum.  Joey bought me the rib rack in the picture below, and today was my first time using it.  It worked great!



After the 4 hours of smoking, I was ready to throw my ribs on the grill, to sauce them and sear in that sauce to create a layer of crust.  It started to rain!  No big deal  I decided to take my ribs inside, and finish off this process under my broiler.  Position the ribs on the top rack on a cookie sheet, brush on your sauce and place the ribs under the broiler.  I sat on the floor with a beer watching them like a hawk.  BBQ sauce has sugar in it.  We didn't add it (besides molasses) but it is present in the ketchup, orange, etc.  It will burn under intense heat.  It will be fine if you just more the ribs a few inches left or right ever 15 seconds or so.  If you took all day making what is sure to be delicious ribs, it would suck to ruin it now.  Once one coat has cooked it, I like to apply at least a 2nd coat and repeat the process.  I would add several coats outside on the grill but since the broiler is tedious, I stopped at 2 per side.  Cut your ribs and serve!