A tornado blew through Wilkinson County a few days ago and knocked out an electrical substation. Woodville, the county seat, and my family's home on Lake Mary lost power for several days.
Our butchered hog lay cut up and packaged in our refrigerator when we lost power, and I had a harrowing thought about what that hog would smell like when it thawed out if we didn't find a way to keep it from unfreezing,
Kim and I loaded all the pig meat into ice chests, iced it down, and distributed it among various family members living in Baton Rouge.
As we parceled the meat, I came across the ribs, which had been packaged in four freezer bags and were still frozen. Let's cook 'em!
Under normal circumstances, we would have slow-smoked the ribs in our electric smoker. However, our smoker was in Mississippi, where the power was out, so we elected to cook them in our kitchen oven in Baton Rouge.
Here's our extemporaneous recipe:
- First, we marinated the ribs for about an hour in Italian salad dressing. Then, we removed them from the marinade and applied a dry rub of salt, black pepper, cajan pepper, and garlic powder.
- Next, we prepared a glaze of honey, a little whiskey, butter, wine vinegar, and barbecue sauce.
- After we slathered the glaze on both sides of the ribs, we wrapped each rack in a double layer of heavy foil, put the packaged ribs in a shallow baking pan, and popped them into a preheated oven, taking care to place them with their fatty sides up.
- We cooked the ribs at 350 degrees for two and a half hours. Then, we unwrapped them, applied more glaze, and broiled the uncovered ribs for five minutes to make the glaze crunchy.
We ate the ribs with Bush's baked beans, which we supercharged with bacon and onions. The ribs paired nicely with a Stella Artis beer.
Our first attempt at cooking feral hog ribs was a success. They tasted better than the pork ribs I buy at the grocery store.
As you can see, we cooked our hog ribs using a scratch recipe. To achieve a similar result, you can use your favorite marinade and grocery store barbecue sauce.
Indeed, If you've ever cooked store-bought ribs, you can cook wild pig ribs the same way, and they will taste just as good. As my friends assured me after my family butchering our first feral hog. wild pigs taste delicious if you don't try to eat a big boar.