Weeknight Spare Ribs

One of my goals is to get the whole family interested in what to have for dinner.  It is a lot of pressure to decide night in and night out what to make for dinner so it's a real treat when someone else makes one of the buying decisions.

This weekend, as we browsed the meat aisle for sales, Joey picked up a rack of pork spare ribs. I was a little leery about it because I was pretty sure ribs take several hours to cook and couldn't be made on a weeknight.

We got home and I took a quick search around the web and found this easy recipe from Martha Stewart.  It does take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to prepare but since Joey works closer to home than I do he was able to start the dinner and we finished it together when I got home later--I hardly had to wait at all!  We only followed Martha's cooking time and spices--we bought our bbq sauce.

These ribs were tasty, tender and a nice change for a weeknight. We also filled up on only about 3-4 ribs a person which seems small in usual times.  This would be good served with any variety of sides like greens, beans and bread.

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 1/2 lbs pork spare ribs
2 T chili powder
Salt & Pepper
BBQ Sauce - any style

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Rub the chili powder, salt and pepper all over the ribs.  Then wrap them tightly in a double layer of foil (so you don't get tons of fat on the pan).
3. Place foil packet on a rimmed baking sheet and cook about 1 1/2 hours or until ribs are fork tender.
4. Just as cooking time finishes, heat the grill** to medium
5. Remove ribs from oven and brush both sides with bbq sauce.  Grill 2-3 minutes per side and serve.

**Several people didn't grill these and just brushed with sauce and put the ribs under the broiler briefly. It would work fine if you're against using another appliance or if you have a charcoal grill and the turning on process takes a long time!