Barbecue Ribs Cooked in the Oven

Using the guidelines for the information essay that my students will be writing over the next few weeks, I decided to write one of my own. My essay appears below.

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Barbecue Ribs Cooked in the Oven

When my wife and I moved to Kansas City in 1990, we were introduced to Kansas City barbecue and sampled some of the many restaurants in the area. By the end of our two years in the area, we had settled on two restaurants—the Wyandot on State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas and Haywards, which, until recently, used to be on the corner of Antioch and College Boulevard in Overland Park before it was sold and moved to Lenexa. We preferred Haywards when we were eating out because of the atmosphere. It was also one of the few restaurants we found that offered both rib tips and burnt ends. The meat used to fall off the ribs that we got at the Wyandot. We preferred the Wyandot when we were eating at home. It was so easy to pick up a slab of ribs from the Wyandot on the way home to our apartment on 72nd Street in Kansas City, Kansas. 

When we returned to the Kansas City area in 1998, after spending six years in Oklahoma, we met my wife’s sister and her family at Hayward’s one Sunday afternoon. For us, it was a treat to order Kansas City barbecue after having been away. While there were not many restaurants offering barbecue where we lived in Oklahoma, the barbecue we had tried in Oklahoma tasted like wood smoke and paled in comparison. 

Once we bought a house in Leavenworth, we did not get into the city as much as we used to. Missing the barbecue that we used to eat, I started experimenting. I had already come to learn that my stomach did not take kindly to food that was cooked outside over charcoal briquettes, so I decided to try cooking barbecue ribs in the oven.

The grocery store offered several options, including country style pork ribs, beef ribs, spare ribs, and baby back ribs. I prefer baby back ribs because of the flavor and because I can pick them up by the bone. My wife prefers country style pork ribs because of the amount and density of the meat and because they are boneless. 

There were also many different kinds of sauce. I have tried KC Masterpiece, Zarda, and Arthur Bryant’s. Most recently, I have been using Stubb’s Original because it is the only sauce that I have found without high fructose corn syrup. This sauce also has a good flavor, and it is not particularly hot or spicy. Because I try to use as few spices as possible when cooking, I can easily resist adding a rub to the meat. Spices, like salad dressing, tend to hide the flavor of the food. 

Through experience, I discovered that barbeque sauce baked in a Pyrex baking dish is extremely difficult to remove when washing the dish by hand. Even the dishwasher cannot complete the task. I started coating two baking dishes with tin foil, making it possible to simply remove the tinfoil before placing the baking dishes in the dishwasher once these dishes have cooled. To ensure that each dish is completely covered, it is necessary to use two sheets of tin foil, one lengthwise and one widthwise, and to fold the excess over the edges. 

At first, I used to place the ribs in a plastic cake container and cover them with barbecue sauce before letting them marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Once I was ready to cook them, I arranged them in the baking dishes that were covered with foil and poured the barbecue sauce from the cake container over the ribs before I put them in the oven. On an occasion in which I was ridding the kitchen of plastic, I got rid of all the plastic containers, having decided against marinating the ribs in plastic and against using plastic in general because of the risks associated with phthalates and Bisphenol-A. Now, I place the ribs in the baking dishes and pour a bottle of sauce over the ribs. I use the back of a spoon to make sure that the sauce is evenly distributed before I put these baking dishes in the oven and make note of the time.

I preheat the oven to 350 degrees while I am preparing the baking dishes, laying out the ribs, and covering the ribs with sauce. Many of the recipes found online recommend 300 degrees. When pressed for time, I have upped the temperature to 375, but my personal preference is 350 degrees because it allows the meat to cook thoroughly. It is also the default setting for the oven whenever I press the bake button. Once the oven is ready, I place these baking dishes on the middle rack in the oven and let the ribs cook for two and half to three hours. It is the kind of meal that requires a lot of time; it is a meal meant for a holiday, or a Sunday, or an occasion when a cold front has settled over the area.  

I have nothing else to do while the ribs cook. Leaving the house is not recommended because of the fire hazard. I usually head off to my home office to grade. After about two and half hours, the meat has pulled back from the bones, if I am cooking baby back ribs, and has turned a light brown (although as a color-blind person I can only approximate).  The smell of cooked ribs starts to waft through the house after only an hour. Our cats go a little crazy as the meat is cooking and pester us for scraps as we eat dinner.

There is no reason to add any additional sauce to the ribs when they are served. Although some people may prefer coleslaw, a baked potato, or French fries with their ribs, I think that ribs are best when served with fresh vegetables, such as tomatoes, carrots, celery, red or yellow peppers, and spinach. Since my wife and I are empty nesters, we can usually get two meals out of a batch of ribs. Ribs for us are an occasional treat, something that we might eat once a month or once every six weeks. Although I have been embracing a diet of fruit and fresh vegetables and resisting eating meat before dark, I have not managed to give up meat entirely because of a meal like ribs baked in the oven.



A meal in a restaurant, while convenient, cannot usually compare to what I can find at home. Ribs purchased at the Wyandot now remind me of eating beef jerky. I cannot see myself ever entering the new Hayward’s. Although I hate to brag, the ribs that I make at home are much better than what I can get elsewhere and for much less money.