I ordered a rack of ribs at a restaurant; they came out covered in a mass quantity of sauce.
Under the sauce, the ribs were over chard, burned, burned--I tell you.
Could this be the reason for BBQ sauce?
It’s a dead giveaway in Texas. If it comes out sauced there’s something wrong. It’s either burnt, dry, old , or just taste bad. I hired a young women as a secretary who had worked in a BBQ restaurant I had been to in another town. I ask her why they served me ribs with sauce on them. Her answer bothers me to this day. She said ”We were told to put any uneaten ribs or brisket back in the warming oven if we found them when we cleaned a table. We had to sauce everything because some of the stuff we put back had been sauced”. To this day I ask for a box and take any uneaten food with me even if I’m going to throw it away.
The better question is, why are you ordering ribs at a restaurant? I can't remember the last time I ordered ribs at a restaurant, just because: 1) I make them better 2) 99% they are over cooked (or burned). I think the last time I ordered ribs was like over 20 years ago at a Chile's. And only because my kids wanted to sing, "I love my babyback, babyback, babyback....Chile's babyback ribs, Chile's babyback ribs....BBQ sauce".
This was before I learned to smoke ribs or anything else for that matter. This was the Weber kettle, KBB, lighter fluid, and burger patties days. If you wanted BBQ you went to a BBQ place. One of the more popular ones even boiled their ribs then grilled them. We just didn’t know any better. I didn’t learn to smoke food until several years later.
She said ”We were told to put any uneaten ribs or brisket back in the warming oven if we found them when we cleaned a table. We had to sauce everything because some of the stuff we put back had been sauced”.
I just exclaimed something unkind and invoked the names of both Marvin Zindler and Wayne Dolcefino!
(For those not in Texas, in the 1980s, Marvin Zindler was known for his 'rat and roach reports' of cited restaurants and Wayne Dolcefino is one of the most tenacious investigative reporters known. Both worked at the Houston ABC affilliate KTRK-13.)
If what I learned had been before that restaurant closed I would have turned them in. As it was their poor food quality got them before the health dept could.
In all seriousness, I like a lightly-sauced rib. In fact, I am smoking some baby backs right now. What I like to do is after I pull them, I brush on a light coating of room-temperature sauce (Malcom Reed/Killer Hogs' The BBQ Sauce is my favorite on ribs), just enough for it to tack up due to the latent heat.
I've found that too much sauce tends to overpower the ribs, in addition to being stupidly messy.
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