Grilling Season '12: Peach Mustard Pork Ribs

Back in August when the prime grilling days were beginning to dwindle we decided we had to try a few off-the-beaten-path variations on our ribs, which were already turning out great with our custom BBQ sauces and rubs. On the Six Seven Eight Facebook page we asked our readers to vote on which non-traditional sauce to make, and the overwhelming majority asked for a coffee BBQ sauce and rub. After that experiment turned out exceedingly well we still had one more interesting twist to try out - a peach mustard BBQ sauce.

Unlike the other sauces we've covered here, this one doesn't require hours of reducing to thicken up, so it's a snap to make in a hurry. The ingredients include djion mustard (we used two different kinds, picture below), spicy brown mustard, apple cider vinegar, peach jam, and onion and garlic diced very small.

You don't want to bite into something crunchy with BBQ sauce, so first the onion and garlic are cooked with butter in a sauce pan until they are softened and incredibly fragrant.

The rest of the ingredients are whisked together and then poured into the cooking garlic/onion/butter mixture.

After mixing everything up we arrived at this sauce that combines sweet and savory flavors. It's essentially done once it's heated up, but we continued to cooking for about a half hour to further develop the flavor. After cooking this can be stored in the fridge until needed.

Here's our rack of pork spareribs that have been washed, trimmed, and set on plastic wrap to contain the mess that's about to happen between the rub and the sauce.

For these ribs we went with a brown sugar based rub to work with the sauce. If you want to see a more in-depth look at how to put together a rub, check out previous blogs for cherry spareribs or root beer baby back ribs.

The rub is poured liberally on both sides of the ribs and then gently massaged in until all the meat and bone surfaces are covered.

We won't just be doing a rub though, as with the different consistency of this sauce we wanted to try using it as a sort of marinade for tenderizing the meat.

After spooning out a line of the sauce, I went about the messy business of working all those delicious flavors into the meat.

Once rubbed and sauced up, the ribs are tightly packed up in plastic wrap and refrigerated for a few hours.

Since we've done a variety of blogs on ribs before, this time I'll pass over explaining how we set up our charcoal. Here we're starting out by cooking over direct heat briefly to get the grill marks.

After we have the desired level of smoky char, a piece of tinfoil is slid underneath the ribs so the meat can slow cook for about two hours.

During the cooking process, the ribs are rotated and turned, and we brush on more of the peach mustard sauce.

At the end of the cooking time we've got fall-off-the-bone ribs that became this amazing shade of red and had a fantastic smell from the peach mustard combo.

As usual, we're having a  salad with our ribs, and a salad needs to be properly jazzed up - here's our fruit and veggies that will be topping the side.

While the salad is getting put together I'm cutting apart the ribs into individual portions for everybody eagerly waiting around the table.

Here's the ribs from a few different angles so you can see the smoky outer layer and the succulent, juicy meat.

Along with our salad we also had homemade potatoes au gratin, which will be covered in-depth during it's own blog segment later on.

This was our last major grilling event of the summer '12 season, although we will still have another blog coming down the line covering some of the smaller meals we made during backyard BBQ sessions. As summer gives way to fall we'll be shifting our focus soon onto making a variety of interesting pasta sauces and bean dishes, as well as returning to our culinary world tour with the next stop: Iceland!