Description
Based on Cheerwine ribs, by Danielle Bennett at Diva Q.
You can cook this recipe with either St. Louis style or baby back ribs. We opted for St. Louis.
Ingredients
Scale
- 2 12-oz bottles of Cheerwine soda (other cherry soda will do if this isn’t available in your area)
- 1/4 C apple cider vinegar
- 1 C ketchup
- 1/4 C minced onion
- 1/4 C brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp hot sauce (Cholula, Frank’s, etc.)
- 2 Tbsp smoked sweet paprika
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 1 Tbsp ground mustard powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp chipotle powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
2 racks of ribs, and a rub you love.
Instructions
Prepare your ribs
- Preheat your smoker to 250°F (121°C)
- Trim, de-membrane, and season your ribs.
- Place the ribs in your smoker with a leave-in probe in them. Set the high-temp alarm on your Smoke X to 160°F (71°C). Spritz them as needed with apple cider vinegar.
- Smoke the ribs until the high-temp alarm sounds and the rib bones are begin to be exposed by the meat pulling back.
- Wrap each rack of ribs in a layer of foil with a few pats of butter and another spritz of vinegar.
- Put the wrapped ribs back in the smoker, re-insert the probe through the foil, adjust the ribs high-temp alarm on the thermometer to 200°F (93°C), and increase the smoker temp to 300°F (149°C).
- While the ribs continue to cook, prepare the sauce.
Prepare the sauce
- Pour the bottles of soda into a wide pot or a sauté pan. Measure the depth, turn on the heat, bring the soda to a boil. (See note below about measuring the soda.)
- Continue to reduce the soda until it is reduced by half.
- While the soda reduces (it will take some time), sauté the minced onion in the butter in a saucepan.
- Pour the vinegar into the sautéed onions, then stir in the reduced Cheerwine.
- Whisk in the remaining ingredients, and bring to a simmer. Simmer until the sauce reaches a good, barbecue sauce-y consistency, about 10 minutes.
Sauce the ribs and finish
- Once the ribs reach the target 200°F (93°C), as verified with a Thermapen Mk4, unwrap them and put them back on the smoker for a couple minutes while the surface dries out a little bit.
- Use a good BBQ brush to slather the sauce onto the top surface of the ribs. Continue cooking them until the sauce sets, then add another layer of sauce and let it set.
- Remove the ribs from the smoker and serve them to people who are prepared to get messy. Be kind and provide paper towels.
Notes
To measure the depth of the soda in the pan, we used a disposable bamboo chopstick. We measured the depth and then cut a notch at the line the soda came up to. To check the reduction, we’d periodically place the chopstick back into the pan and compare the depth in relation to the notch we’d cut.
[caption id="attachment_25099" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Look carefully and you can see the notch we cut in the stick.[/caption]