Pork Ribs.....OMGoodness!!!

About a year ago, The Boy got a little courageous and tried some ribs at our local Chili's Restaurant. I think it was messy-love-at-first-bite because ever since then, if he sees that the menu contains the words "Ribs", he wants nothing else. And, just recently, The Lady has given the messy meal a try and has never looked back.

Over our Spring Break holiday this year, my weekly menu was filled with some non-fast-food yumminess. We've had a good healthy week of menu items and I've tried a few new things that have now made it to the "do again" list. Of course, The Little is my biggest challenge these days and I just refuse to fight at dinner so I usually make her something a little different. The girl's gotta eat. But I'm not doing that for much longer, she needs to grow out of that and fast!

Tonight, my adventure was making pork ribs. I've always been a little intimidated with cooking steaks or ribs. There just seems to be so much precision that is required. My father was always in charge of this when I was a kid and then I married someone who isn't a huge meat eater (unless it's chicken). So it was another daunting project that I brought on myself. The outcome was A-MAZING!! Not one rib was left behind and JB even enjoyed a little. Maybe if this works out, I'll learn to make my own BBQ sauce......

Here's how I did it!

Ingredients:
 - 3 pounds of pork baby back ribs
 - your favorite rib rub
 - 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
 - 1/3 cup soy sauce
 - 1 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
 - your favorite BBQ sauce






What you do:
 - The night before you want to enjoy your rib meal, prepare the ribs by cutting into portions (about 4 ribs each) followed by rubbing the rib rub on both sides. Refrigerate overnight.

- The next day, you mix up your marinade of vinegar, soy sauce and liquid smoke.

- Place ribs in your slow cooker and then pour marinade over top.

 - Turn your cooker to low and cook for 4-6 hours, turning ribs occasionally. The meat will be done when the meat falls off of the bone. Many slow cookers are different so make sure to check on your meat often to not over cook.

 - Once meat is cooked through, heat up that grill to medium-high heat. Remove your ribs from cooker and coat both sides with the BBQ sauce. Then you will place the ribs on the grill for 15 minutes (turning once) to give the BBQ sauce a little char. It doesn't take long.

Ours turned out like this! You could litterally pull the bone out of the meat with no problem. They were so good. One critique I received from our experienced rib eater, The Boy, was that he likes his ribs with the meat on them. He doesn't want to eat them with a fork and knife. Well, if that's all, I can handle that. Next time I will take them out of the slow cooker a little bit earlier.

We paired these finger-lickin' good ribs with corn on the cob. Needless to say, dinner was a huge hit and Mommy added something else to the "do again" list. Thank you. Thank you very much!