NEVER Grill Your Ribs! Try These 45 Appalachian Farm Tricks

🔗 Grandma never wrote hers down, so my wife finally did. All 118 plus much more. Get em before they're gone: https://cecilrowe.com Cecil Rowe sets a rack of ribs in a covered roaster and never once lights a grill — and in this one he counts down 45 old Appalachian ways to cook ribs and use a whole hog, the plain hard sense of a mountain kitchen where one November hog fed a family clear through to spring. He walks you through the low-and-slow roaster, pulling the membrane and salting the night before, the vinegar mop and the rub nobody bothers to measure, and every last scrap put to use — cracklins, jowl bacon, liver pudding, pickled feet, chitlins, red-eye gravy. And after sixty years he holds back the two he never quite says out loud: the one thing he lays under those ribs that beats any gas grill ever built, kept for number two, and the very last one of all, the part of the hog his people never let go to waste. In this one, Cecil covers: • The low-and-slow covered roaster — 275, lid on, no peeking • Pulling the membrane, salting the night before, and the vinegar-pepper mop • Reading doneness and the roaster's heat by ear and nose, not a thermometer • A whole hog put to use — cracklins, jowl bacon, liver pudding, pickled feet, chitlins • The sides off the same table — soup beans, wilted lettuce, fried apples, cornbread to sop the pan • The one thing laid under the ribs, held back to number two • The very last one of all, held to the end Tell us in the comments who it was that taught you to cook a hog — a daddy, a granddaddy, some old neighbor down the road — and whether there's anybody left in your family still cooking ribs low and slow the old way. Cecil reads every one himself. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Ribs That Never Saw a Grill 1:28 Never Boil the Ribs First 2:14 Knowing Which Cut to Buy 3:00 Pull the Membrane Before the Salt 3:46 Salt the Rack the Night Before 4:30 275, Lid On, No Peeking 5:14 Knowing It's Done Without a Thermometer 6:04 Sauce Only in the Last Twenty Minutes 6:40 Rest It, Then Cut Bone Side Up 7:18 The Vinegar-Pepper Mop 8:02 Save the Rib Tips, Don't Pitch Them 8:43 Country-Style Ribs Aren't Ribs 9:22 Judge the Heat by Ear and Nose 10:02 Backbone and Ribs, Fresh Off the Kill 11:00 Curing a Country Ham in Dry Salt 11:49 Rendering the Fat Down to Lard 12:29 Cracklins From the Strainer 13:16 Low Hickory Smoke in the Smokehouse 14:00 Where a Rib Sits on the Hog 14:40 A Calm Kill Day Makes Tender Meat 15:25 What the Hog Ate Is in the Fat 16:11 Chitlins, Cleaned by Hand 16:54 Jowl Bacon, Cured With the Hams 17:38 Pickled Pig's Feet, No Ice 18:32 Liver Pudding From the Scraps 19:21 The Same Lesson on a Tough Cut 20:04 Low and Slow Beats Hot and Fast 20:55 A Bed of Hardwood Coals 21:42 Neck Bones and the Picnic Shoulder 22:32 The Rub Ratio Nobody Measures 23:17 Sorghum or Apple Butter for Sauce 24:16 Red-Eye Gravy From the Drippings 25:00 The Bean Pot Cooked Alongside 25:41 Why Beans Belong Beside the Ribs 26:25 Cornbread to Sop the Rib Pan 27:03 Wilted Lettuce in Hot Grease 27:46 A Sharp Slaw or Chow Chow 28:28 Fried Apples Against the Rich Meat 29:12 Taters and Onions the Next Morning 29:56 The Bones, Gnawed Clean 30:47 Cooked for the Whole Gathering 31:29 A Plate Kept for Whoever Showed Up 32:06 One Hog to Feed a Family Till Spring 32:51 Hog-Killing Day and Traded Labor 33:36 What I Laid Under the Ribs 34:31 Souse, the Last One of All 35:33 Set With Me a Spell