Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs with Root Beer BBQ Sauce

Two years. One hundred and four weeks. Seven hundred and twenty-eight days of standing in my kitchen and telling you about the food and the family and the love and the grief, and I am not done, mi amor. I am not close to done. The sofrito is in the freezer and the stories are in the pot and the stirring has not stopped and it will not stop because stopping is not what Delgado women do. We cook. We stir. We feed. We continue.

What has changed in two years? Mami is in Hartford. That is the biggest thing. Miguel Jr. is married to Jenny and they are expecting a baby in May. Rosa has Carlos and they are serious and heading somewhere beautiful. David is in Brooklyn, rising, cooking, making mofongo that is getting closer to mine every time, which thrills and threatens me in equal measure. Sofia is in community college, acing anatomy, heading for nursing school. Eduardo is Eduardo — steady, boring, beautiful, mine. And I am fifty-two, still running the hospital kitchen, still making fifteen hundred meals a day, still coming home and making dinner for whoever is at the table, which is always more people than the table was designed for.

The church threw a small party for Mami last week — a welcome to Hartford celebration. Dona Mirta brought cake. Patricia brought flowers. The church ladies brought food. I brought everything else, which is to say I brought pernil and arroz con gandules and flan because a party without pernil is a meeting, and Luz Maria did not leave Bayamon for meetings.

Mami sat in her chair at the church party and she looked around at all these Hartford faces, these people who are not from Bayamon, who do not know Hato Tejas, who have never heard coqui frogs at night or walked to the panaderia at dawn for pan de agua. She looked at them and she said, Thank you. That was it. Two words. From a woman who usually says ten when two will do. Thank you. The simplest words. The most complete words. The words that hold everything she cannot say about leaving and arriving and being eighty-one and starting over in a new city three blocks from her daughter kitchen.

I stood behind her and I put my hand on her shoulder and I said, You are home, Mami. She said, I know, Carmen. I know. And she reached up and she patted my hand the way she used to pat my hand when I was small and scared of the rain, and the patting said more than words, the way it always has, the way it always will. I am home. She is home. We are home. The table is set. The food is ready. Two years. One hundred and four weeks. The food is good, mi amor. The food has always been good. And it will keep being good. Wepa.

I brought pernil to Mami’s party because that is what Delgado women do — we bring the pork, we bring it slow-cooked and falling apart, we bring it in a pan too big for the car and we make it fit anyway. These slow cooker baby back ribs are not pernil, but they carry the same promise: low heat, long time, patience rewarded. When you are feeding people you love, when someone has just arrived somewhere new and you want the food to say you are home, you put pork in a pot and you let it do its work.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 7 hours | Total Time: 7 hours 15 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 racks baby back ribs (about 4 to 5 lbs total), membrane removed
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1 cup root beer (not diet)
1 1/2 cups BBQ sauce, divided (your favorite store-bought or homemade)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Instructions

Season the ribs. Pat the ribs dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne. Rub the spice mixture all over both sides of the rib racks.
Make the sauce. In a medium bowl, whisk together the root beer, 1 cup of the BBQ sauce, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar until combined.
Load the slow cooker. Cut each rack in half so the ribs fit more easily. Stand the rib sections upright along the walls of a 6-quart slow cooker, meaty side facing out. Pour the root beer BBQ sauce over and around the ribs.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours, or until the meat is tender and pulling away from the bone. Do not cook on HIGH — patience is the whole point here.
Broil for finish. Carefully transfer the ribs to a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush generously with the remaining 1/2 cup BBQ sauce. Broil on HIGH for 3 to 5 minutes, watching closely, until the sauce is caramelized and slightly charred at the edges.
Rest and serve. Let the ribs rest for 5 minutes before cutting into individual pieces. Spoon extra pan drippings from the slow cooker over the top before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs with Root Beer BBQ Sauce — The Pork We Bring to Every Table That Matters