Ingredients:
- 1 cup ketchup
- 2/3 cup honey
- All the sauce from a can of chipotles in adobo sauce
- 3 chipotle chiles from chipotles in adobo sauce minced, seeded optional, or more to taste
- 10 garlic cloves minced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup dijon mustard
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon McCormack® Peppercorn Medley
- 2 tablespoons dried Mexican oregano
- 3 pounds baby back or spare ribs
Directions:
One to 24 hours in advance, prepare the marinade.
Mince the garlic and set aside.
Measure out the apple cider vinegar in a small dish. Open the can of chipotle peppers and dip all the peppers in the apple cider to strip away the adobe sauce. Discard all but three peppers (unless you want really, really hot ribs). In a mini-prep or small blender, purée the adobo sauce and the three peppers. Add to a medium bowl, with the apple cider vinegar you used to "clean" the peppers.
Measure out and add the rest of the ingredients and add them to the mixing bowl. Carefully stir until all the ingredients, including the honey, are well-blended.
Line a roasting pan with a tenth of foil sufficient for meeting in the middle to then fold down to the ribs and also fold up the sides, making a packet. Then, if you plan to marinade over night in the refrigerator, line that foil with saran wrap.
Place the ribs, first, curved side down, to brush on a thick layer of the marinade. Then flip the ribs to curved side up, adding some marinade along both lengths of the ribs. Fill the ribs with marinade, and add any extra along the sides once more. Cover up with the saran wrap, then make a packet with the foil, folding first where the two sides meet in the middle and then along the sides, making neat folds so you can open them up later.
Refrigerate for up to 24 hours.
Carefully, slowly, open the the foil packet and then saran wrap. Carefully, slowly, slid the saran wrap out from beneath the ribs, using a spatula to scrap off any marinade clinging to the saran wrap. Place in a preheated oven and cook for 90 minutes at 350.
Take the ribs from the oven and carefully open the aluminum foil, taking care not to be burned by the steam, and tear it back so that the ribs are fully exposed, but the sides of the foil are keeping the marinade tucked around the ribs. If the marinade resting atop the ribs in the curve has spilled when removing the pan from the oven, spoon the thickened sauce from the bottom of the pan on top of the ribs and place them back in the oven to roast another 20 to 30 minutes. The ribs should be 180 degrees. Remove from the oven and let rest for a minimum of 5 minutes.
Alternatively, you can finish off the ribs on the grill at medium heat, for about 15 minutes, instead of putting them back into the oven.
Carefully, use the bottom of the foil packet to drain the marinade from the roasting pan into a jar for re-use, such as with barbecue chicken!
Myrtle's Note: These were bloody fantastic! My instructions leave the ribs on the foil instead of taking them out after the first cooking period. This keeps the marinade a bit soft, but also preserves about 16 ounces for re-use, such as with chicken. As with all my chipotle pepper recipes, I purée the adobe sauce and peppers so as to minimize surprise hotness from chunks of pepper. I also use liquid from the recipe, in this case the apple cider vinegar, to make sure I am not "losing" any of the tasty adobo sauce when I am discarding the peppers. Again, these were really tasty!
Serves 4-8 (depending on how hungry folk are)
