Are you familiar with Ronald McDonald House?
Our network of local Chapters has been helping millions of families with sick children find comfort and support when they need it most. Our programs, tailored to meet the urgent needs of each community, can now be found in more than 64 countries and regions across the globe.
-RMCH.org
Essentially these homes are allowing families with sick children stay together during a most difficult time. They provide room, board, and even food thanks to volunteers in each community. Pretty great, right? My college sorority has been committed to serving Ronald McDonald House Charities as its national philanthropy so it holds a special place in my heart.
I’ve recently become an ambassador through our local chapter (#RMHCCVAmbassador) so I learned about the Meals from the Heart Program where groups can come and prepare a meal for the families. Jimmy and I went earlier this week and brought along our wonderful “Junior Ambassadors” (extended family members ages 11-15) to help us serve a meal consisting of BBQ ribs, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, corn on the cob, and strawberry lemonade. It was so fun! For local folks follow this link (https://rmhccv.org/serve-a-meal/) to sign up to prepare/provide a meal.
Our kids are too young to volunteer but they did join us for the tour weeks earlier. Preston is old enough to understand the concept of what we were doing when we left him with a babysitter and told us “good job” as we left to “Dr. Ronald McDonald House.”
The ribs were a hit and filled the building with smells of comfort. It’s pretty amazing what food can do to your state of mind. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get our ribs as tender as we’d like in the allotted time to make a meal there so we did some prep at home. Here’s Chloe pretending to help with the macaroni and cheese. The kids were preoccupied with playing air tennis in the living room while watching Wimbledon this day.
Thank you to all our Junior Ambassadors!
| Prep Time | 30 minutes |
| Cook Time | 2.5 hours |
| Passive Time | 2.5 hours |
| Servings |
people
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- 1 rack of pork baby back ribs or pork back ribs
- 4 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1/4-1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1/2 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper (if you don’t like your ribs with a kick decrease to ¼ tablespoon)
- 1 tablespoons chili powder
- Your favorite BBQ sauce - we didn’t cook using BBQ sauce since we were cooking for a large group. It was provided on the side. optional
Ingredients
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- Preheat oven to 250 (you will be cooking low and slow)
- Remove the tough membrane on the ribs.
- Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl to make your rub.
- Once the membrane is removed, pat the dry rub all over the ribs on both sides. The ribs meat will start looking a bit reddish. Wrap the ribs in heavy duty foil. Place on a cookie sheet (to catch liquid and drippings) and place in oven for 2 and a half hours. After two and a half hours they should be pretty tender but check on them at this point and if they need more time, give them another up to 30 minutes in the oven covered.
- Increase oven temperature to 350, uncover the ribs from the foil. If you are using BBQ sauce at this point brush your ribs with BBQ sauce and cook at 350 for an additional 30 minutes. If you do use BBQ sauce keep an eye on your ribs to make sure they don’t burn on top.
- Cut ribs individually or in sections by 3 and transfer to a platter to enjoy.
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