I have had one particular goal in life since getting married, cook the perfect ribs.
This may seem easy enough for most, but I am not most people with it comes to this. Let me explain:
1. I usually only cook chicken breasts, purely for preference. I am a white meat kind of gal. However, I am a white meat kind of gal married to a red meat kind of boy. Enter sob story for my husband… lol! ;)
2. I don’t do well with raw meat. You have heard me explain this to you before, particularly in my Slow Cooker BBQ Ranch Meatloaf post. The less handling of raw meat, the better. I am not a vegetarian by any means (although, I can completely respect those that are), but the thought of raw meat sends anxiety through out my body. I like to dump it into whatever its cooking in as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is one reason most meat I buy is boneless meat. Its ready to go. See my other rib posts; Slow Cooker Hawaiian Ribs and Slow Cooker Easy BBQ Ribs for some boneless recipes (although they could easily be made with bone-in as well).
3. I have been long since been trying to redeem myself from my first rib disaster. Story time. A year or two ago, My husband was coming home from a week long business trip and I REALLY wanted to make him a dinner he would love. Ribs are one of his favorite entrees when we go out to eat, so why not make it homemade?! I bought a rack of ribs from my grocery store, followed a random recipe and threw them in the oven. They couldn’t be that hard, right?… WRONG! He walked in the door to a disaster. I opened up the oven and black smoke was every where and the ribs were burnt to a crisp. Literally. I cried. A lot. Being the sweet husband that he is, he tried his best to eat them with a smile, but we ended up chucking them out and ordering take out instead. Ever since this particular experience, he hasn’t fully trusted me to make ribs that live up to his standards.
Flash forward to today’s recipe. These are PERFECTION. I couldn’t believe how amazing these were when I sampled the finished product. I could hardly wait for my husband to sit down at the dinner table and sample these bad boys for himself! They just fall right off the bone, as a good rib recipe should do. I have decided that bone-in meat is far more tender than boneless (that is unless you screw up and burn your bone-in ribs like me in the story above.)
My husband took one bite of these ribs and exclaimed, “YOU HAVE DONE IT! These could be the best ribs I have ever eaten!!!!” There you have it folks! Not only have I redeemed myself, but this recipe may have topped his favorite ribs chart!
Ingredients
- 3 lbs. baby back pork rib rack
- salt
- pepper
- ⅓ cup honey
- 3 Tbsp. mustard
- ¼ cup real maple syrup
- 1 cup honey BBQ sauce, I love Sweet Baby Ray's
- additional honey BBQ sauce for after ribs are cooked