BBQ Pomegranate Ribs

Crossing things off my Freezer Meat Challenge list I realized that I hit all the safe and easy things first. I have been avoiding the larger items like racks of ribs and whole chickens because they just seem intimidating to me.

Throwing caution to the wind, I thawed the pork spare ribs, drawing inspiration from this month's copy of Taste of Home magazine. Slow cooker ribs are on the cover and I've cooked them before successfully, and gosh dang it I could do it again!

I won't even bother posting their recipe because the only things I did similiar was use barbecue sauce and something fruity, that was all the boost I needed to get me started down the creative path of dinner prep.

BBQ Pomegranate Ribs in the Slow Cooker

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 18oz. bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's Hot n Spicy sauce
2 8oz. bottles POM Wonderful pomegranate juice
~2 lbs. pork ribs

First, I sprayed the crock pot (this is very helpful in the cleaning process). Then I dumped in the onion, garlic and black pepper. I found the barbecue sauce in the fridge and dumped it in after tasting a small bit on my finger to see if I liked it. By the time I'd dumped it in, the heat on my tongue had started to grow and have a little burn to it. That's when I noticed it was the Hot n Spicy sauce. Eeep! How to tone it down? I didn't want to use cherry preserves like the magazine recipe, so I grabbed the beautiful POM bottles! I dumped the first one in, tasted, and it was much improved. The 2nd bottle I dumped in the barbecue bottle and shook to rinse it out and get all the flavor out. I whisked everything together and the taste was fantastic! Still a nice kick from the barbecue sauce, and a delicious fresh, tart burst from the POM.

Last, I trimmed the pork ribs of excess fat and cut them into individual rib sections and threw them in the sauce. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, until meat is tender.

I cooked mine on low for about 6 hours and they were juicy and tender. Unfortunately, I turned it on high for an hour with the lid off to try and thicken up the sauce, that had become pretty watery, and the meat dried out a little bit. I'd recommend just sticking to the low and slow method, ignoring the sauce because it still coats all the ribs and gives them DELICIOUS flavor.

Johnny and I almost finished a whole ~2 lb. rack ourselves, despite them being a little dried out. The sauce was really tasty and I would have never thought to add something fruity to hide in the background, but now I think it'll become a habit of mine! Cooking in the crockpot kept them juicy and eliminates the fear of the sugars in the BBQ sauce and POM from catching fire on the grill and charring too much.