Crock Pot Ribs? WTF?!

Cafe Society
1

I have complained about eating ribs that were mush. Ribs need texture and this weekend I had ribs that had been cooked in a crock pot, and then thrown in the smoker for 30 min to firm them up. They were almost mush but not anywhere like biting into a rib. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve put country style ribs in a crock pot with barbeque sauce or a pork butt or chuck roast, but that’s because that’s the texture that works for those cuts. Crock-potted ribs are just nasty. If you want to crock-pot pork, make pulled pork not pulled mush used to be ribs.

As you can tell, this came very close to oing into The Pit.

2

Shrug, not my favorite cooking method either but still pretty good. Crockpot chicken wings, too: wet and sloppy, too soft, over rendered.

3

I blame this on the common misconception that good BBQ Ribs are supposed to be fall-off-the-bone tender. No, that is not a metric for good ribs.

4

God no. Why do I leave the membrane on my pork ribs? They need bite. They need to be almost fall off the bone but not quite.

5

I am at work.
Glanced at the latest posts and was certain I saw Crack Pot Ribs.
I was … bewildered but intrigued.

6

There is a degree of doneness where the rib meat parts cleanly with the bone, but only with a bit of a tug… not slumping off under gravity.

When it’s gone that far, that’s too far.

7

That is so funny because I picked up a rack of 6 ribs. The rib I was holding stayed in my hand and the rest of the ribs fell off and splattered on the counter.

8

Yeah. That’s a subtle hint that maybe those were a leeetle overdone.

Such a shame.

9

Or ham.

10

Country-style ribs are fantastic in a crock pot, but those aren’t the kind of ribs people think of when they think “ribs”. (And they also aren’t actually ribs at all, despite the name; they usually are loin or shoulder meat.) These are perfectly fine to put in a crock pot, and I wonder if people are confused and putting the wrong kind of “ribs” in a crock pot.

I agree that spareribs, baby-back ribs, etc. should not be in a slow-cooker.

11

Indeed. Slow-cook a mess of country-style pork, potatoes, and sauerkraut and you’ve got an awesome meal.

But leave the real ribs for the smoker.

12

Beef broth & BBQ sauce. Use the juice when you are done as tater-tot dipping sauce

13

I’m so damn hungry now.

14

I don’t have a smoker, but I’ve gotten pretty good results in a low temp oven. Nothing like the real deal, but good enough to eat.

15

What I wonder is: how can anyone use a Crock Pot for anything they want cooked low and slow? I think we all know that CPs operate at too high of a temperature to properly cook any form of BBQ-like dish. AFAIK, this is due to corporate lawyers trying to avoid lawsuits arising from consumers who might get sick eating undercooked food. Their answer? Make the temperature too high to cook BBQ. Thanks, guys!

This temperature issue leads some folks to rig up their CP to use dimmers or whatnot to lower the temperature to the proper range. I’ve looked into it but it’s a bit too Yikesy for me.

16

Agreed. In fact (and this is probably just a me problem) I get better results from my oven-braised pork ribs than in my smoker. I can do really good sausages, turkey, chicken, etc… but my ribs are never satisfactory.

But the Alton Brown oven-cooked ribs always come out really nice (if not authentic BBQ by any means).

17

Alton Brown is an alchemist.