It's Monday, and a double-whammy of everything I hate about Mondays: I have no idea what to fix for this week's dinners, I'm bored and feeling incredibly unproductive despite my best efforts to accomplish things, and I'm hungry because Sean has my car while he's out for a photography project and I'm stuck at the office with no way of getting home to fix lunch aside from walking (and I don't have house keys to get in anyway).

So let's talk about the one meal I've managed to make within the last week: spareribs in the oven.

The recipe: Sweet & Smoky Oven Spareribs from Smitten Kitchen.

No pictures this round. Not that I didn't take them, because I did. But my pictures suck and look entirely unappetizing. And rather than turn you off simply by the poor visual of the ribs I'm opting to forego them.

I made these on a Sunday, which is pretty much required since they take 6ish hours to bake at a low oven temperature.  I was excited about these from the onset - Meijer had spareribs on sale for $1.79/lb and I had pretty much everything I needed to make the rub for them except for the smoked Spanish paprika... I'm pretty sure the only place I'd find that is at Whole Foods in Columbus and even then I'm not 100% positive. Ohhhh that rub... let me tell you, my mouth was watering as I made the rub and then proceeded to put it on the ribs (and watering now as I think about it a week later). I'm pretty sure it's a universally acknowledged fact that brown sugar makes everything better (no? just me then?). I had about 2.8lbs of ribs, so I halved the rub recipe (except for the salt... SK's writer, Deb, had noted that she would have added more salt the next time she made them because she found the ribs to be too sweet for her tastes. I unintentionally added the full amount of salt, I assume a subconscious action after reading said note).

Deb also notes that you will want to watch your oven's temperature if you have an oven thermometor because ovens tend to be weird at low temperatures. I picked up a $5 one at Meijer since I've been thinking about getting one for a while anyway  and I'm glad I did. (Side note: the DeWitt household needs a new oven because apparently the cheapo one that came with the house is a complete and utter failure... no wonder my chocolate chip cookies never seem to turn out right. As it turns out, thanks to the handy thermometor, my oven runs about 50 degrees or so hotter than what it should be.)

6 hours later I pulled the ribs out and put the juices from them into a saucepan to reduce into a sort of BBQ sauce. Here I learned that I really have no idea how to tell when something has reduced to the right consistency. It would be easy to tell if I had, say, a small saucepan full. But the miniscule amount that I had made it really hard for me. I persisted, however, and got what I figured was close enough (and once the sauce cooled 100% it was more obvious that I did it right since it had thickened up significantly).

The texture of the rib meat was perfect (not that I'm an expert or anything): not exactly fall-off-the-bone, but the meat was nice and tender as you tore it off the bone. They smelled amazing, but flavorwise... I'm echoing Smitten Kitchen's sentiments that they're a bit too sweet. The first few bites it wasn't noticeable, but the more I ate the more aware I was of it. And because I inadvertently added the full amount of salt to a halved recipe they were too salty for me.

I'll be making these again (especially since I stocked up on ribs while they were on sale) but I'll probably experiment a bit with cutting back the sugar.  I might add more chili powder to make them a bit more spicey, or maybe use some red pepper flakes or something in the rub along with it.

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