Emergency Sous Vide Baby Back Ribs

Shortly before the Fourth of July weekend I was faced with a barbecue emergency. I had already defrosted a Turkey and started brining it in preparation for smoking it. However, Target had a great sale on baby back pork ribs and I couldn't resist especially since a lot more people than expected were going to show up at my July 4 barbecue party. So how to cook both smoked turkey AND baby back ribs? The answer was sous vide. I didn't have enough room on my smoker to cook both at the same time so my solution was to sous vide the ribs for 8 hours at 165 degrees and then sear it on the barbecue right after the turkey was done smoking.

In this video, you see how I prepared the sous vide baby back ribs. Was it absolutely as good as smoking the ribs for 5 or 6 hours? Not quite but it was definitely good enough. I also recommend sous vide when you don't have time or conditions available for complete smoking of ribs. You can sous vide your ribs ahead of time and keep it refrigerated in the vacuum sealed bags until a day or two later when you can finish them off by searing them on a grill. Tail gate parties come to mind for this situation.

BTW, my sous vide only cost me about $50 since I purchased one without all the bells and whistles which mainly means I can't pair it to my cell phone. Why I would want to pair it to my cell phone I have no idea but by not being able to do that which I wouldn't do in the first place I saved a lot of money on the purchase price.