Grilled Ribs With Salt & Vinegar Marinade

Barbecued ribs are great, but given the choice, our family will take these marinated ribs over barbecue nearly every time. Preparation is easy - and the crispy, tangy result is out of this world! By the way, this marinade recipe is also outstanding for grilled chicken.

WHAT YOU NEED:

Pork Ribs

Vegetable Oil

White Vinegar

Salt

Garlic Powder

A Grill (I recommend a gas grill because of the fairly long grilling time)

Step 1: Prepare the Ribs

I'm using a whole slab of ribs (about five pounds) for this Instructable so the ribs are fairly large (Figure 1). Cut between each rib with a cleaver or sharp knife. This will give the marinade a greater opportunity to penetrate the meat (Figure 2). If you're using smaller ribs such as baby back ribs, cut between every other rib.

Step 2: Make the Marinade

Measurements in this recipe are absolutely flexible. Generally, the vinegar-to-oil ratio should be about 4 to 1. For the 5 1/2 pounds of ribs I'm grilling here, I used one quart of vinegar and 1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil (Figure 3). You can use wines instead of vinegar and oils other than vegetable if you want to experiment.

You will also need about 1/4 cup of salt and 3 or 4 tablespoons of garlic powder. That sounds like a lot, but remember that most of it will be lost in the marinade.

Use a container you can seal well and a funnel to pour the salt and garlic powder into your container (Figure 4). Add the vinegar and oil (Figure 5), seal the container and shake very well to dissolve the salt, distribute the garlic powder and mix the vinegar and oil.

Step 3: Marinate the Ribs

For this amount of ribs I used two 1 gallon size plastic bags and placed half of the ribs in each bag. Shake the marinade again and pour half of it into each bag. Squeeze the bags down to remove as much air as possible and seal them.

Place the bags in a baking pan in order to catch any runoff if either of your bags should happen to leak (Figure 6).

You'll achieve the best results if you prepare this in the afternoon and place the bags in the refrigerator to marinate overnight for the next day. If you want to prepare and grill the ribs the same day, make the marinade in the morning and let the bags sit unrefrigerated until you're ready to grill them.

If you're refrigerating, take each bag out and squish it around every few hours to redistribute the marinade. If you're not refrigerating, do this every hour until it's time to grill.

Step 4: Grill the Ribs

Whatever grill you are using, you'll want a low-medium to medium heat for a fairly long grill time. Preheat the grill, then lay out the ribs (saving the marinade) and close the grill. Total grilling time will be 30 - 40 minutes. Turn the ribs roughly every five minutes during grilling and baste both sides twice with the reserved marinade during the earlier part of the grilling time (Figure 7). Open the grill only to turn and baste the ribs. Don't baste during the last fifteen minutes or so of grilling time.

The ribs will be done when the membrane on the bare side of the ribs is nice and crispy and the meat is cooked through and slightly blackened in places.

That's it - easy, delicious...and ribs! What more could you ask for? Thanks for viewing my Instructable. Please let me know if you try it out for yourself, and...

Peace,

Radical Geezer