A few days ago, we had my mother-in-law over for testing our new barbecue, a Weber Performer Deluxe.

For the occasion, we rubbed up a small handful of long ribs (pork) and left them in the fridge overnight.

Now, these ribs turned out so well, I thought I would share the rub and the grilling process with you guys – and for me to remember for the next time we grill long ribs 😉

Rub

2 table spoons of freshly ground pepper
2 table spoons of sea salt
1 tea spoon of garlic powder
2 table spoons of sweet paprika
1 table spoon of onion powder
1 table spoon of herb salt (fine salt mixed with cumin, powdered ginger, powdered cilantro and cardamom – blended to atoms!)
1 small tea spoon of ground muscat
2 tea spoons of brown sugar

Mix it all up in your mortar, rub the ribs well with the mixture and wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge over night.

Grilling

I my mind was torn over the grilling process, as Google tried to convince me, that long ribs should cook for at least 2-4 hours! As I did not have 2-4 hours, I decided to wing it. For starters, I took the meat – 4 pieces of rubbed, 1.5 inch/4 cm thick long ribs with bones in ’em, out of the fridge about an hour before it went on the grill.

To leave room for both high heat and low heat grilling, I only filled up one half of the grill with hot coals. Closed the lid and let the grill heat up properly, and with the temperature inside the grill blasting over 200C, I put the ribs on the hot side of the grill and put the lid on again.

I left the ribs on for about 4 minutes, before flipping them over. Another 4-5 minutes, and I moved them to the cooler side of the grill, leaving them for a more indirect heat.

The ribs now had a nice slightly caramelized outer shell, while slowly heating up on the inside. Following a scheme I found online, I went with flipping them over every 10 minutes, giving them about 1 hour in total.

As we had never done this before, it was a bit of a gamble, but these long ribs turned out SO well, we are heading back to the butcher to get some more ribs. Moist, tender and tasting very, very well because of the rub.

This is a rub and grilling process, we can only recommend.

We served the ribs with a salad of fresh green lettuce from our vegetable garden, green beans (also home produce), small tomatoes and grated cheese, alongside green beans (haricot vert) rolled up in bacon (about 4-5 beans per roll) and grilled till the bacon was crisp.

Enjoy 🙂