A couple of months ago, Edna at expatedna.com published a post about some of the strange search terms that have led to her blog. Some of the weirdest that she cited were: “German army uniform 2012,” “watered down biracial baby with mongolian spot,” and “if i’m part asian does it still make me racist?”
If only I were so lucky! In the entire time that I have maintained this blog, I have not had one strange search lead to me. Not. One. Single. Weird. Search.
You know what that means?
It means I’m boring.
To be more interesting, maybe I should have a plushie chase me across a Croatian nudist beach covered with technicolor Rastafarian Jesus squirrels wearing sequin pasties and rubber panties!
No, I’m not actually going to do that 🙂 I just wanted to up the chances of a strange search ending up here 🙂
Anyway, among the pedestrian search terms that led people to my blog were: “french breakfast radish recipe,” “juicy pork chops,” and “quick oven baked baby back ribs.”
I know. Very exciting.
Seriously though, this post on oven-roasted baby back ribs remains one of the most popular posts that I have ever done. However, for the number of times that it gets viewed, it has very few comments. I attribute this to one of two things: either my recipe is terrible, or the lead-up to the recipe is misleading.
The recipe is terrific, but the lead-up to the recipe is misleading because it is my mother’s recipe and she lied to me.
See, my mother told me that these ribs would take a mere 30 minutes in the oven. What she neglected to add was that they take about 30 minutes after the first hour.
So I’m here to redress this wrong: oven-roasted ribs will take at least 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook. An hour and 30 minutes. You cannot cook ribs faster than that because there is too much connective tissue and collagen to break down. You just can’t. But you should still make these ribs because they are delicious, just plan accordingly.
I had intended to make these ribs for a special occasion, but given the soaring temperatures last week, I was spurred to cook them ahead of time and meet my friends in a nice, air-conditioned restaurant instead. In my haste, I forgot to mix the seasoning with soft brown sugar. I simply rubbed them down with one of Lior Lev Sercarz‘s beautiful spice blends (Pierre Poivre No.7, if you’re interested), and threw them into a 350° oven for an hour and a half.
Done and delicious.
Ingredients:
1 or 2 racks of baby back pork ribs
1 heaping tablespoon of steak seasoning or rib rub per rack of ribs
Kosher salt
Special equipment:
One wire rack to fit the sheet pan
How to prepare:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 350°.
2. First remove the membrane on the back of the pork ribs. It’s super easy to do and allows your ribs to cook nice and flat, without curling up. It also makes them much nicer to eat. To do this, flip the ribs bone-side up. Using the flat handle of a spoon or a dull butter knife, loosen the membrane on one end of the rack of ribs. Grasp the loosened end with a paper towel and pull the membrane slowly in the direction of the opposite end. It should come off in one piece. If it doesn’t, you can just grab the torn end and continue. To help visualize, here is a how-to clip from BBQTalk.
3. After drying the ribs with paper towels, rub the seasoning mix into both sides of the rack. Sprinkle both sides with salt and arrange them on the wire rack.
4. Set the racks of ribs in the oven. Carefully pour about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of water into the bottom of the sheet pan. The water should not touch the bottom of the wire rack. Roast the ribs in the oven at 350° for an hour to an hour and a half until the ribs are tender and buttery. Remove the pan carefully from the oven. Let the ribs rest for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
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coolcookstyle 
And they do look delicious!
I’d be curious to know how many spam messages you got with your first bold sentence, too 😉
Merci beaucoup, Carine!
As for the spam messages, we can only hope 😉
I’ll be right over for some ribs 🙂
BTW … Is it you or the plushie in the Jesus squirrels and rubber lingerie?
Yes, come on over!
And I believe it is the Jesus squirrels wearing the rubber lingerie 😉
Btw, I was also inspired by your series on naughty cooking terms and suggestive vegetables 😉
Jesus Squirrels? Whoa….can’t get that image out of my mind especially when it’s paired with “rubber panties”. LOL. This blog may be becoming too X-rated for me to read. Just kidding! The ribs look heavenly. The No. 7 rub sounds extremely tasty and it has my interest piqued. I think the secret with ribs is, like you said, to let them rest for a while before eating them. All of those yummy juices need a minute to sit and saturate everything. Btw – with my old blog, the # 1 search phrase was “P.O.W. prison camps in Maine”. Yep. That’s right. I tried to write a blog about a bunny and a piggie and people really just wanted to know about prison camps. Very depressing. It’s such a strange world we live in.
Sercarz’s spice blends are so lyrical! I highly recommend them all. There is a link on the right-hand sidebar of this blog for La Boite à épices. Even just reading the elements for each blend is incredibly evocative of a place, a time, a journey.
I agree, the secret to all meat is letting it rest. I also find it fascinating what the most popular searches are for people. I don’t get any of that. Mine are all food-related.
Maybe some rubber panty-wearing Jesus squirrels will change my luck 😉
I poked around the website a little bit. Rice pudding with #39 Reims sounds out-of-this-world fantastico! It’s not that hard to grow herbs in a kitchen window. I could totally see you creating a best selling “#1 New York Special Blend/Limited Spring Edition” suitable for organic lamb (and farm raised venison, where available). You’re so talented and my instincts tell me you have a special knack for herb and spice blending. 🙂
Aw, thanks heidiskye! Given the pollution in NYC, I don’t think I would eat anything grown on my windowsill . . . As for spice blending, I should give it a try!
Mmmm….ribs. I made ribs for supper but I was super lazy and did them in the slow cooker.
Slow cookers are a godsend, aren’t they? I have never done ribs in them, but now I really think I must! How did you do them? Where they short ribs?
No, today they were regular pork ribs. I had to cut the rack in two to fit it in. It depends how big the cooker is. I have many and I find they cook faster than most people think. I think the temps are different in modern ones because of food safety concerns. But I digress…anyway, yes I’ve done short ribs and they work out great. I like to braise them and it works great for that. I love doing ribs in a smoker but that’s an all day affair and my smoker didn’t make it through the winter.
My slow cooker is one of those round, deep ones so I would need to probably cut them into thirds. I also haven’t quite mastered slow cooking. I think I’m putting too much liquid in the crock . . .
Sorry to hear about the smoker though! I dream about having a green egg.
We’re dreaming the same dream.
I see them everywhere!
Sweetie, you’re not boring, you just don’t use enough weirdo metaphors. We can change that. Your oven-roasted baby back ribs look as delicious as a slutty celebrity princess eating marshmallows dipped in melted chocolate on a hot summers night.
I came for the Croatian nudist beach photos but ribs are better. Much better. I hope you get a plethora of rubber panty and Jesus squirrel fans now too. But once they arrive, will they stay?
Haha! Your comment made me laugh so hard that I scared people on the subway. I just want to put a “slutty celebrity princess eating marshmallows dipped in melted chocolate on a hot summers night” on a t-shirt 🙂 I can just see the image now 🙂
Fingers crossed for the rubber-pantied Jesus squirrel fans 🙂 Maybe they’ll subscribe and this blog will take an very different direction . . .
sounds pretty special to me! I think I may try this recipe… alert the fire department.
Thank you, Lanier! I think the adding water to the pan cuts down on significantly on any smoking 🙂 Do let me know if you try it!
What a fun read! I hope you get some funny researches in the future! I get them all the time and love them! My all-times favorite remains: Lennoncurd.
As to baby ribs, I wonder what they are in French; I know what ribs are, but not the baby kind. I find that getting meat parts right from one language to another is not always easy: But the recipe looks fantastic! Yummy
Merci beaucoup, Darya!
So far today, the searches include “les halles mushroom soup,” “babby back ribs,” and “bacy back ribs.”
Insert head-shaking here. Not even interesting and misspelled on top of it! So sad!
As for butchery terms, oh those are the hardest to translate since US butchers cut up the animal completely differently! The best thing that I have found is to show a picture to my butcher. Côtes levées maybe. Or maybe that is a French-Canadian thing.
What a delish food my dear! I will have to ask my Mum to try to do this for me and Dad one day. Or I will try to do it myself.
Thanks, dear Lucas! Do let me know how they turn out and what the side dishes are!
Will do that!
One of my favourite posts is the one about what’s inside a woman’s handbag – its unbelievable the number people that google ‘why you shouldn’t look in a woman’s handbag’. As for ribs they looks amazing!
Thank you!
That was one of my favorite posts too. I have to admit that what is in my handbag is boring: pocketbook, lip balm, handkerchief, compact mirror, dental floss.
She has god knows what – i thinks its the three or four bottles of water I dont get – I mean how can you get all those bottles in there – its like a Tardis.
Haha! Or like Hermione’s velvet beaded bag. The one from the Deathly Hallows that she fits an entire tent in.
Christ and I thought I had it bad
🙂
yum!
Thank, dear Brie! I’ll bring some when we meet up 🙂
Hey – they are your ribs and you prep them the way YOU want to. You are correct about the cooking time. Try misspelling some of your tags and see what happens.
Thank you, Scroungelady! As for misspelling tags? Oh, I just can’t!
First of all, YUM. Second of all, I can’t believe you haven’t gotten weird-ass search terms. I get them ALL THE TIME. Holy necrophiliac giant nipples! We need to do something to change this!
Thanks, Susan!
Yup, none. Not one weird search. Even in the days since the post went up. Today’s search terms are: “cooking french breakfast radishes,” “anthony bourdain mushroom soup,” and “essential cutting board sizes.”
Holy necrophiliac giant nipples, indeed!
Oh these look so so good! Thanks for the link, though I don’t find you boring at all 🙂
Thank you so much, Edna! And thanks for making me laugh with you post!
The ribs looks delicious! I’m starved now! I prepare them much the same way as you but I always struggle with removing the membrane and it never comes off in one, nice, easy, sheet. God, it’s such a hassle to dig and poke away to get it off. Urgh,
I cannot BELIEVE you don’t any weird search terms that lead to your blog! Lucky devil. I get so many sex ones with the most innocuous being “classic sex” (as opposed to what? Futuristic sex??) and the weirdest being “smell of woman’s decomposing body during sex.” I’ve had endless, weekly searches for “hairy man full frontal,” some for “omar sharif naked,” and quite a few about men and orgies. Honestly, I’m convinced the one inquiring about decomposition smell during sex is by some future necrophiliac serial killer….
I suggest you start mentioning sex a few times in your blog and see what happens. 😛 😉
It is a bit tricky to get off, but it is so worth it to remove the membrane! It’s amazing how many people don’t bother . . .
Nope. Not one weird search term. Today’s boring searches include “anthony bourdain mushroom soup,” “french breakfast radishes,” and “wooden cutting board.” Pretty much the same three every day, every week.
I think you’re lucky! “Omar sharif naked”? Snort! But that decomposition one is seriously messed up. To which post was it directed?
Yes. That is SEX a very good SEX idea about how to SEX attract more SEX bizarre attention SEX 🙂
LOL! Yes, SEX is a good IDEA because SEX sells! 😉
As for the decomposition smell/sex one (heh), I suspect my post on Patrick Suskind’s book, Perfume, probably was the source material that ended up inadvertently bringing them to my site. I can’t think of any other times that even SOME of the words may have been. mentioned.
You may find this interesting: a massive amount of searches get to my site for food issues. Specifically, gastronomy of the royal chefs, royal banquet recipes, royal food preferences. I have a number of posts like that (ex, “Food fit for a king (literally)” or stuff on the favorite dishes w/ recipes of diff. royal families throughout Europe). So, I suspect some culinary students somewhere are repeatedly pulling them up because I get explicit searches for my blog in connection with food stuff. LOL. Even SEX and royal food. (See, sex is everything in blogging. lol)
I’ve read the book but have not seen the movie. I think the book was so graphic, I felt like I did perfecting fine imagining the scenes on my own! There was a perfumer who came up with scents to accompany scenes in the film, wasn’t there?
Royal food is so fascinating. The gluttons are crazy to read about! And the one who just didn’t care about food puzzle me. Now I’m going to google royal chefs to see if it leads back to you 🙂
Girl you had my mouth watering over here LOL. I couldn’t stop licking my lips, but the strange thing is I didn’t even know I was doing it. My co-worker asked why you licking your lips, you hungry? LOL. I LOVE this post and recipe
Thank you, Kay! Sometimes that happens to me too. Reading food blogs can be dangerous 🙂
How did I miss this? Damn you, WordPress Reader! You know, we don’t get all that many strange search terms either, despite Steve’s constant attempts. The ribs look great.
That pesky reader! Grr! Once I sent a message to WordPress asking them what the heck was up with their reader not showing all my subscriptions and they told me that the remedy was to just ignore the reader and have an email sent. How irritating, right?
No interesting searches for you either? I am comforted that I am not alone 🙂
And thank you for the kind compliment!
My mouth’s watering at the sight of these succulent ribs! 😉
Thank you, Malou!
Preety damn good roasted ribs,
as asian, i would love to enjoy this with a porridge and chilli oil…
Thank you so much! Oooh! Porridge with chilli oil sounds really good right now . . .
My favorite, regular search terms that lead to me are “mouthfuckers”, “egg porn” and “food for old people”
Oh no! You’re kidding??? Ever since this post went up, I have gotten “why dont i like the taste of the food i cook” and “if the french cook with butter what do the english cook with.”
*sigh* I would take perverts over stupidity any day. Lucky you!