Pork Spare Ribs - Part 2

So how did it turn out? Pretty darn good, if I say so myself...

These are the beans I made as a side dish. I'll share my confession when I talk more about them.

These are the ribs.

Two hours into the roasting, I checked on my ribs. Pretty tender, but could be more. I let them go for another half hour. Seemed to be just right. I removed all the ribs from their pans onto another pan to cool. I strained all the juices from the ribs and skimmed off as much fat as I could. Then I started to make my beans.

For the beans, I rendered some diced bacon pieces. (I bought a pack of bacon ends from Thundering Hooves, which was perfect for this purpose.) Then, I added about a cup of chopped onions and two chopped garlic cloves. The bacon didn't give off much fat, so I added a little of the fat from the pork ribs to help the onions & garlic sweat a little. Here's the cheatin' part for the beans...I added one can of pinto beans, rinsed, to the pan. I covered everything with the strained liquid from the ribs, and brought it to a simmer.

The flavor of the beans was incredible, but pretty salty and it was a bit brothy. I took out about a cup of beans with liquid and pureed it with a little water & about a tablespoon of bbq sauce until very smooth. I added that back into the beans to give it a little thickness, without reducing the liquid and making the flavor saltier. This made the dish look a little like refried beans. I still felt it was a bit salty, so I added about a tablespoon of brown sugar and a splash of red wine vinegar. That seemed to do the trick.

To finish the ribs, we threw them on a charcoal grill and slathered them with bbq sauce, flipped, added more sauce, flipped again for another minute and pulled them off the grill. Sadly, I didn't make the sauce. America's Test Kitchen recommended Bullseye, so that's what we used.

I feel pretty proud of myself for making these ribs. They were actually quite simple to prepare, and didn't take a ton of time.