Binging with Babish: Ribwich from The Simpsons

Homer: "A Ribwich, please!" "Oooh, no lettuce now!" Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week we once again look at the curious case of the Ribwich, a rib sandwich whose contents do not include ribs. So right off the bat we are breaking the rules by doing a dry massage for our ribs. We start with about a cup of brown sugar, a tablespoon of chili powder, a teaspoon of dry mustard, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of smoked Spanish paprika, a teaspoon of garlic powder, and a good shake of regular paprika because … why not?

Then, like any dry seasoning, we should season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, about 2 teaspoons each. Lightly whisk as best you can and be sure to taste for seasoning. Remember, if your dry dough doesn't taste good, you won't taste good. Oops, sorry you had to see that. Now we move on to the wet massage, I guess you would call it? A heady mixture of about 4 parts yellow mustard to 1 part ketchup, and maybe like 1 part liquid smoke. I know all the barbecue fans are shaking their heads at me, but we're trying to solve the riddle of baked ribs that we're going to turn into a sandwich anyway.

Save your energy for summer. Speaking of ribs, the first thing we need to do with our ribs is tear off the paper membrane on the back of each rib. Paper towels make it very easy to grab the membrane, which sounds like a dirty saying but it's not. We then brushed each surface with our mustard ketchup liquid smoke mixture and then used it as a sort of glue for our dry rub. We start with the bottom of the ribs and then repeat on the top. At this point, your house should completely smell like barbecue. If not, I would check the expiration dates on your spices.

Anyway, we stack these ribs high and then we wrap them in the strategically placed plastic wrap that we've put on the table, and then we refrigerate them for at least 8 hours and up to 24. A full day later and we're going to unwrap our ribs and Place them on a rimmed baking sheet and then we're going to put it in the freezer, because we're going to place them in a very hot oven. This method comes courtesy of America's Test Kitchen, whose key step is to smoke the ribs using lapsang tea, which is very clever because it has its own inherent smokiness, so we're going to spread 6 lapsang tea bags on our other baking sheet with edge in which we are going to place a grid inside.

And then I'm going to make a large aluminum foil lid by fusing 2 sheets at the seam, like this. I don't want smoke to come out. Speaking of which, here come our ribs after their 45-minute period in the freezer, during which time our oven was also preheated to 500°F with a pizza stone inside to make sure all that heat was transferred to the tea. . Once our package is tightly packaged, we place it in the oven at 500° for 30 minutes and then remove it, lower the heat to 250°F, and pour a beer into the corner of our baking sheet.

This will steam the ribs and help them become very, very tender during the next hour and a half that they will spend in this 250°F oven. Now, during the last 30 minutes of cooking, we are going to make a quick and easy barbecue sauce starting with half a grated onion and 3 cloves of crushed garlic. These are the aromatics that we are going to sauté in a small saucepan, along with a splash of vegetable oil over medium heat for about 2 or 3 minutes, until everything is soft and smelling, in a good way. Then we added about a tablespoon of chili powder, let it roast for another 30 seconds or so, and then added a cup of tomato sauce, along with 2 to 3 tablespoons of blackstrap molasses for sweetness and color, 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, about a teaspoon of Worctfshersire sauce, a small shake of cayenne pepper, about 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika and that's it.

And then we will beat all these ingredients, cover and cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Then we'll just keep this guy warm until the ribs are done, and they are. For this application what we are looking for is that the bone can rotate with little resistance even though it is still attached to the meat. But we still have one step left and that is the second layer of paint. Starting with the bottom of the ribs, we are going to coat them generously with our freshly made barbecue sauce. and then throw them under the broiler for 5 to 7 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Then we'll turn them meat side up and repeat, lovingly basting them with barbecue sauce and placing them under the broiler for 5 to 7 minutes, until golden brown and crispy. You can keep repeating this if you want, but I'll stop here because, dare I say, it's sandwich time. My plan was to just remove the bones and make some sort of boneless rib burgers, but these ribs didn't have enough meat and ended up falling apart. But I think it will be a great sandwich. The Ribwich may not have lettuce, but if it's modeled after the McRib, that means thinly sliced ​​white onion and pickles, all on top of a soft, pillowy submarine roll.

Let's put some nice boneless ribs on top, give it a nice second coat of barbecue sauce, and then lovingly place some onions and pickles on top. It was at that moment that I realized I wasn't making the food from the show, I was making a tribute to the food from the show and sometimes that's okay. In this case, I wanted to recreate the almost illegal, pupil-dilating, blood-pressure-pumping nature of the Ribwich and I must say, in that spirit, this is a pretty close approximation. It's also a chance to check out baked ribs, a challenge faced by anyone who's given up mowing the lawn to live in an apartment, and there's definitely a great technique to learn here, enough to get you half this sandwich at the Club clean half a sandwich.

Wait, I have to take this half to the other room for..."analysis". ♪♪