I love ribs but am not fond of heavy, sticky sauces, so was delighted to find some dry rub recipes, which inspired me to come up with this.
A couple of quick notes: This is not a same-day recipe. The coated ribs should sit in the fridge at least overnight, if not 24 hrs, then need to be cooked for 2-3 hours over a low source of indirect heat.
The ribs can be cooked on a barbecue, grill, or smoker, where smoke will enhance the flavour. But if you use an oven, as I did, you MUST put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to catch the fat drippings and prevent smoke/fire!
Ribs may be parboiled for no more than 10 minutes prior to adding rub. This helps eliminate a lot of the fat. In this case I did not parboil them.
1 rack baby back ribs (pork)
2 tbsps mustard powder
1 tbsp garlic granules (or garlic powder)
1 tbsp curry powder
5 basil leaves, dried
2 bay leaves, dried
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp white peppercorns
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cumin seed
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (unless you like more heat, then add more).
In a mortar and pestle or spice grinder, coarsely grind the bay leaves, basil, cumin seed, peppercorns, and sea salt. Mix well together with all other dry ingredients. This is now your dry rub.
Massage the dry rub into the meaty side of the ribs. Put coated ribs in sealable plastic bags in fridge at least overnight, if not 24 hours.
I did these ribs in my oven at 325 degrees for 2.5 hours, with a drip pan half-filled with water to catch grease drippings.
Enjoy! Once I was done shooting and tore down the set, I wasted no time warming them back up and gobbling them down!
Oh yeah setup...natural light from a North-facing window, camera on tripod.
pp: exposure, brightness/contrast, curves, saturation/ lightness, crop, resize, smart sharpen, save for web
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I really like how you set out the spices in front to show what went into it - very nice touch for a recipe challenge. They look very good, too! (I discovered something called McCormicks Roast Rub, which is a whole lot easier given that I don't cook, don't have a mortar and pestle, and would completely forget I had ribs in bags waiting to be cooked after I rubbed them... Anyway, the pre-produced rub probably isn't nearly as good but works pretty well on tri-tip!)
This is too sharp (bet you thought you'd never hear that one...huh?).
The current style of food photography rarely if ever has everything in focus. If the food image is being used to idendentify specific product such as, a spice, an herb, a fish or utensil, etc. only then is sharp focus necessary. Otherwise full dof food images went out with Betty Crocker Cookbooks in the 1970/s/80's. Cheers!
Having said that, this will probably place better than my shot.
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