Sweet And Sour Baby Back Ribs

Graham Stewart

April 28

I've been making oven baby back ribs with bbq sauce for years. Also for years I have been making sweet and sour pork buttons. The pork buttons have always been a treat for my wife and when ever we can find them I buy some. Finding them over the last few years has become kind of a problem. 6/7 years ago we could find them fresh in most grocery stores, now we can only find frozen ones in one store. My wife says it is my fault because of my post on the blog. For me that's a maybe, but it is the most viewed post on my blog. Sweet And sour pork buttons are great and we like them maybe a little better than the ribs.

Today, after thinking about it all week I decided to try something with the ribs. The sweet and sour sauce we use for the pork buttons is great and simple to make. Sweet and sour ribs I have had in asian restaurants and they're really good but different than baby back ribs. They are made differently, but the sauce is basically the same. My idea was take my oven ribs and rather coat them with bbq sauce use the sweet and sour sauce. Glad I did, they turned out great and as my wife said " your making these again".

The recipe for the sweet and sour sauce is on my blog under sweet and sour pork buttons. You can use any sweet and sour sauce you like, even the one in the jar from the store. Which ever you use there are two things you need to do. You need to increase the amount of vinegar, with my sauce recipe an extra half a cup and I would do the same with the store kind. Also the sauce needs to be thickened to the consistency of a bbq sauce. For pork buttons it needs to be more liquid because it is in the oven for a long time. With the ribs it's just heavily coated on the ribs and only in the oven for 25/30 minutes. Don't know if the sweet and sour sauce would work on a bbq. My thought is the sugar in it would burn and become bitter.