I don’t have much time (this is all happening early in the morning) and I’m new to this forum, so thanks in advance for any quick help I can get. Here’s the issue:
I’m oven-baking bbq ribs tomorrow. I want to cook them for a total of 4 hours, BUT I’m taking them to a relative’s house out of town. My plan is to cook them for three hours at my home and then driving the 2 hours to the relative’s house and putting them in their oven for the last hour. Will this work? Will I be sacrificing texture or food safety? Getting to their house early enough to do all the cooking there isn’t really an option. Thanks!
They’ll be cooked all the way through after 2 hours … the extra time is just for texture. If they’re cooked all the way through, I don’t need to worry about bacteria after just two hours, do I?
If you take them hot out of the oven and insulate them really well, they will continue to “cook” using all that residual heat that you are trapping in. If you are saucing them while in the oven, the acid in the sauce should buy you enough time for the two hour trip; especially if you are keeping them hot in the car. Insulation could be lining a cardboard box with lots of newspaper, putting the parchment (I don’t like aluminum foil touching my foods, especially acid ones) and then foil wrapped baking dish with the ribs into the box and covering well with more newspaper. You could even throw a blanket over the whole thing after that. To keep them “cooking” you could even put a pizza or bread stone in the oven with the ribs when you bake them and when you pack up the ribs to travel, you could put the baking stone in there too. It will act like a big heat sink and will release the heat as you travel, keeping the heat higher longer.
Don’t forget to put parchment between the food and the foil.