Slow-Cooked BBQ Pork Ribs

There is a particular kind of April light that I associate with my own childhood, and it visited the kitchen this week and I let it stay. The week was a spring week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

Brandon golfed Saturday morning, attended his executive secretary meeting Sunday morning, and did the dishes Wednesday night, which is the rhythm of our life now. We have been married a long time. The arithmetic of it is the arithmetic of my whole life. There were years we missed each other in the same room, and there are years we find each other in the silences, and this is one of the latter, and I am old enough now to know that the latter is the achievement and the former was the cost.

The recipe of the week was beef and barley, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. Sunday prep is twenty-eight bags. I time myself. The accountant never leaves. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan, 19, is at BYU studying international development. He still cooks chicken adobo for me when he comes home for Sunday dinner. Olivia is 18, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason is 15, finishing high school, with calluses on his hands and a plan that does not yet have words. Lily is 13, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 10, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I will close the laptop in a moment. I will go to bed. I will get up tomorrow. The freezer will be there. The photograph will be there. The work will be there. So will I.

The beef and barley went into the freezer this week, all twenty-eight bags of it, but this is the recipe I keep coming back to when I think about the conversations that happen over a cutting board on a Sunday afternoon — the kind that need something low and slow in the background, something that doesn’t require your attention once it starts. Slow-cooked BBQ pork ribs are that recipe for me: you prep them, you walk away, and by the time the day has done what it does to you, dinner is already handled. That is the whole philosophy, really, just written in pork and smoke.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 7 hrs | Total Time: 7 hrs 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 lbs pork baby back ribs, membrane removed
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup BBQ sauce (your favorite brand or homemade), divided
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

Make the dry rub. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, salt, and cayenne. Mix until evenly blended.
Season the ribs. Pat ribs dry with paper towels. Rub the spice mixture generously over all sides of the ribs. If time allows, cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight for deeper flavor.
Prepare the slow cooker. Whisk together 1/2 cup BBQ sauce, apple cider vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce in the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker.
Add the ribs. Cut the rack into 3—4 rib sections to fit. Stand them upright along the inside wall of the slow cooker, meaty side facing out.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6—7 hours or HIGH for 3—4 hours, until the meat is tender and pulling away from the bone.
Finish with sauce. Carefully transfer ribs to a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush with the remaining 1/2 cup BBQ sauce. Broil on high for 3—5 minutes until the sauce is caramelized and slightly charred at the edges. Watch closely.
Rest and serve. Let ribs rest 5 minutes before cutting. Serve with extra BBQ sauce on the side.
Freezer instructions. Cool completely, wrap sections tightly in foil, then place in labeled zip-top freezer bags. Freeze up to 3 months. Reheat from frozen at 300°F wrapped in foil for 45—55 minutes, or thaw overnight and reheat at 350°F for 20 minutes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked BBQ Pork Ribs — The Freezer Knows What Sunday Was For