Ribs Like Applebee’s – Why Copycat Recipes Are Great

Do you know what makes my mouth water? Ribs. Melt in your mouth, slavered in sauce, ribs. The kind of ribs you need a bib because they fall apart as you eat them.There was a little takeout shop just up the road from me that made the most excellent ribs. The best ones around. I ordered in often, and ordered extras so that I could heat more when I felt like it. I was in heaven. And then they closed down. Then I was mourning. Do you know how hard it is to find a place that makes good ribs? Let me tell you, it’s hard.I didn’t even begin to try and copycat them at home.

I decided after I’d tried my fourth or fifth place that cooking ribs must be an artform. The places I went to, takeouts just like the one up the road, made okay ribs. Not excellent but passable in a rubbery, not the right tasting sauce kind of way. So I expanded my search and eventually discovered Applebee’s Babyback Ribs. I was in heaven again. They melt in your mouth and there’s just the right amount of sauce and the taste! If you’ve ever tried them you know what I mean.

The problem is that I couldn’t afford to get them all the time. And I couldn’t cook them at home. They had special ingredients, and besides they’d be awfully complicated. I fully admit to being a pedestrian cook. Ask anybody who’s suffered through one of my meals. So, I switched on the cooking channel, as you do. After some surfing I came across more than one program cooking ribs. Good, I thought. Well, maybe not. They were complicated. Beyond my skills. I was back to square one. Or so I thought.

Then I decided to do what I should have done in the first place: I fired up Google and did a search, or three…maybe a few more than that. I came across some recipes. One that even purported an Applebee’s copycat recipe of their famous Babyback Ribs. I tried them, and they all failed me miserably. Maybe it was my lack of skills, but I didn’t think so. It almost tasted right, you see. There was something missing from the whole equation. So I kept on searching. Eventually I came across “America’s Most Wanted Recipes”. They had the recipe, too. But you had to pay for the cookbook, and who wants to pay for a cookbook when you can get the recipes for free on the net? I bookmarked the site, and then went looking for more copycat recipes. They all failed.

Eventually, after exhausting all the easy options, I went back to the site, and bought the book. I should have done it in the first place. The recipe was easy to read; the ingredients easy to find, and even I could cook it. That was a plus, but would it taste like the real deal? That was the crux of the matter as far as I was concerned. Imagine my surprise when it did.

The moral of the lesson, at least for me, is that sometimes you have to pay money to save money if you want to get what you really want. In my case it was melt in your mouth, need a bib to eat them ribs. If you want to eat Applebee’s Babyback Ribs at home, all you need is the copycat recipe. so get “America’s Most Wanted Recipes”. When it comes to Applebee’s copycat restaurant recipes they are at the top of their game. They aren’t too shabby with many of the other restaurants, either. I’ll just go back to thinking about ribs now, and let you decide where to best spend your money.