Crockpot Country-Style Ribs
Meaty country-style pork ribs slow-cooked until fork-tender, then brushed with barbecue sauce and broiled for sticky, caramelized edges.
- Crockpot
- Slow cooker
- Oven
- Pork
- Dinner
- 400 min total
- Serves 6
Ingredients
Ingredients for servings
Enter a number of at least ½, in steps of ½.
Original recipe serves 6. Ingredient amounts adjust automatically. Cooking times and pan size may need adjusting separately.
- 3 1/2 lb country-style pork ribs, bone-in or boneless
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tbsp smoked paprika
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp cayenne, optional
- 1 yellow onion, sliced
- 1/2 cup apple juice
- 1 1/2 cups barbecue sauce, divided
Gear
- Slow cooker, 6 quart
- Sheet pan and foil
- Tongs
- Basting brush
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Steps
Step 1: Mix the brown sugar, paprika, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper and cayenne. Rub it all over the ribs.
Step 2: Spread the onion in the slow cooker, lay the ribs on top and pour the apple juice around them.
Step 3: Cover and cook on Low 6 hours, until the ribs are fork-tender but still holding together.
Step 4: Heat the broiler with a rack about 6 inches from the heat. Line a sheet pan with foil.
Step 5: Carefully move the ribs to the sheet pan with tongs. Brush them with 1 cup of the barbecue sauce.
Step 6: Broil 3 to 5 minutes, until the sauce bubbles and gets dark at the edges. Watch it the whole time. Brush with the remaining sauce and serve.
Swaps
- Juice: Beer or chicken broth instead of apple juice.
- Finish: Instead of broiling, grill them over medium heat 2 to 3 minutes per side.
- Sauce: Use a mustard-based barbecue sauce for a tangy Carolina twist.
Tips
- Country-style ribs are cut from the shoulder end, so they love a long, slow cook.
- Don’t skip the broiler. It turns soft, saucy ribs into sticky, caramelized ones.
- Line the pan with foil. Burnt sugar is a pain to scrub.
The story
HAM Cooking. Let’s fire it up.
Here’s a fun fact about country-style ribs: a lot of them aren’t technically ribs. They’re thick strips cut from the shoulder end of the pork loin, sometimes with a bit of bone, sometimes with none. Nobody tells them, and they don’t seem to mind.
What matters is that they’re cut from the shoulder area, which means plenty of fat and connective tissue. That’s exactly what a slow cooker loves. Six hours on Low breaks it all down until the meat is tender enough to pull with a fork.
The trade-off is that a slow cooker steams. It can’t give you the sticky, charred glaze you get from a grill. So you split the job in two. The crock does the tenderizing. The broiler does the glazing. A few minutes under high heat caramelizes the sugar in the sauce and gives you those dark, chewy edges everybody fights over.
Just don’t walk away from that broiler. Sugar goes from caramelized to charcoal in about the time it takes to check your phone.
HAM out.
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