Grilled Baby Back Ribs

Grilled Chipotle Honey Ribs

Who doesn't love grilled baby back ribs? There are entire restaurant chains formed on them alone. Here your will find our favorite baby back rib recipes, from traditional to exotic!

Baby Back Ribs are very popular since they cook up pretty quickly making them ideal for the grilling or the traditional BBQ low and slow. They are versatile and great when you don't have hours to tend a smoker. 

One of the tricks to great baby backs is to remove the membrane on the back side. On many ribs, especially the less expensive ones there will be a white membrane or skin the back side. If you want tender ribs, this should be removed.

To do this you will need the following:

A towel or cloth

A boning knife or a sharp pointed instrument, like the tip of a meat thermometer or fork.

Work the tip of the knife or other instrument under the membrane and wiggle a corner of the membrane free. Using the cloth, grab the skin and steadily pull if off down the rack of ribs. Your ribs will be much better without this, and you will save on most of the toothpicks! 

Check out Wikipedia's Pork Rib page for more information!

Grilled Baby Back Ribs with Hoisin Dai Fao


These grilled baby back ribs are comfort food for me. As a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, at one point I went to high school in “The City”. My school was near fisherman’s wharf and I took the cable car on non-peak tourist times to school. That runs straight through Chinatown, and I used to love the energy and how different that part of the city was from well just about anywhere.

Even as a kid working in the restaurants, I learned from Cho, Kwok and Chan. They taught me how to do many authentic Cantonese dishes that were our kitchen dinners.

Rainee and I used to walk through Chinatown to look for different ingredients to play with. Later, when I was at the California Culinary Academy I studied with a great chef named Ken Hom, who has a number of books and a TV show in the UK. Ken has been amazingly successful and prolific in the UK and Europe. I highly recommend Ken’s books starting with his classical chinese techniques then East West. Ken taught a strong basis in traditional Chinese cooking, then into Pacific rim or East West. These grilled baby back ribs are not a classical dish and are really more of a modern fusion of east west, Asian ingredients and western technique. I really enjoy this type of cuisine when it is done right.

This is a grilled baby back ribs recipe that I make at home when I am yearning for those flavors, but not truly a  classic recipe.

Serves 4

2 racks baby back ribs

Marinade

1 cup rice wine vinegar

1 cup soy sauce

4 tablespoons fresh ginger finely chopped

4 tablespoons fresh garlic finely chopped

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 tablespoon Chinese five spice powder

combine all and marinate the ribs 4 to six hours.

Hoisin Glaze

1/2 cup hoisin sauce

1 teaspoon five spice powder

1 teaspoon Sriracha chile sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon water

combine all, hold for glazing the ribs
Prepare a two zone fire for cooking the rids, I like to get marks on them, then indirect heat around 350 to 375 degrees. I watch until the bones protrude around 1 half inch or so,, when you see that start painting on your glaze. Continue painting on the glaze for around another ten to fifteen minutes. I finish off on high heat, to get the hoisin glaze to caramelize a bit. But at that end part you have to watch them closely the hoisin can burn.

Cut the ribs and garnish with sesame seeds and green onions slices on a 45 degree angle. This a great with rice and garlicky sugar snap peas.

For wine an off-dry Gewurtraminer, Pinot Gris,  Johannesburg Riesling or a great Paso Robles Rhone style Rose work well.


We live in an area now where it is not alway easy to find great Chinese or Asian ingredients, we have been using Amazon Prime. Check it out it's great! 


Click here for Mustard and Molasses Grilled Baby Back Ribs



Click here for Grilled Baby Back Ribs with Zinfandel BBQ Sauce


Back to top of grilled baby back ribs 

Back to Great Grilling Pork Recipes

Want to go back to Great Grilling Homepage? Click!

Share this page:

What’s this?

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.
var l = window.location.href, d = document; document.write('<form action="#"><div style="text-align:center"><textarea cols="50" rows="2" onclick="this.select();"><a href="'+l+'">'+d.title+'</a></textarea></div></form>');