This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ShareFunshine #CollectiveBias

When I think of the Summer and Summer fun I think of grilling. I love to grill. I love to grill so much that I take exceptional care of my grilling equipment to make sure that it is in the topmost working order. I recently got a brand new STOK grill that has these removable inserts and one of them was for ribs. Well, I could not wait to get started with that so for this #ShareFunshine shop I made sure that Dr Pepper® Cherry was going to become the sauce for my ribs. I had never made sauce before and so I found a few recipes to get inspired and then blended a few plus my own touches to make things truly unique to me and my style. Because, something that my friends and family know about me is how much I enjoy experimenting with flavor. Below you are going to get the complete recipe and some mouth watering BBQ photos. I hope that you enjoy them and try out my recipe yourself. There is also a chance to win prizes through the Share Funshine Sweeps app (below)

I first headed to Walmart to pick up some supplies for my Dr Pepper® Cherry BBQ sauce for the ribs. I already had the ribs and everything else but I wanted to get some Dr Pepper® Cherry for the recipe and original Dr Pepper® for my wife plus a few other things.

If I was out grilling then everyone was going to get some tasty treats for after dinner. So, I picked up the M&M’s® Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches 6-pack, SNICKERS® Ice Cream Bars 6-pack and also some Skittles® because, well Skittles® are a fun Summertime candy. Recipe below but first that Sweepstakes I was talking about.

Share a Little Funshine Sweepstakes

When you are out shopping for your own #ShareFunshine related products you can Download the Blippar app from your Apple or Android store to scan your package and receive exclusive content.

Okay, let’s get down to it. Recipe Time!

I picked up two racks of ribs a while back during a great sale and froze them. I defrosted them overnight and then put a rub on them and also some brown sugar. I like to have a crispy sugary crust on my ribs. I may have overdone the amount of brown sugar because there was additional brown sugar in the BBQ sauce recipe as well. Once the ribs were properly rubbed I cut each rack in half so that it would fit on the rib rack on my grill. I tightly wrapped each half rack in heavy foil and put them back in the fridge. Here’s where I could have done better. I was so focused on putting the ribs on the grill that I forgot that I should have done a little cook time in the foil and in the oven. I like my ribs fall off the bone tender which means that most of the time my ribs fall right off the bone. Getting the exact time right is an art and I’m still a student, not a master.

But I can put together a mean BBQ sauce. I found a few recipes online and decided that in addition to some of the ingredients I would add a 1/4 cup of Chia seeds and some locally made sauce called Black Jack Sauce. This is similar to Worcestershire sauce so I reduced the amount of that sauce by 1/3 and made up the rest with the Black Jack.

INGREDIENTS

• Sauté these ingredients first
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• Wet Ingredients
• 1 cup ketchup
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• One 12-ounce can Dr. Pepper or 12 oz from a bottle.
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar – I used unfiltered, not sure if it made a difference
• 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce – I added a local version called Black Jack to the Mixture
• Dry Ingredients
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons ancho or New Mexican chili powder
• 1 teaspoon fine-ground white pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 Cup of Chia Seeds

First you are going to sauté the chopped yellow onion and garlic in the butter. This will take about 10 minutes until the onion gets translucent, I went a little longer till the onion started to caramelize. This was due to me getting the wet and dry ingredients together while I did the sauté. You should probably get those ready before you start to sauté.

Once I had the butter, onions and garlic ready I added the rest of the ingredients and got them bubbling. I continued to stir the mixture so that everything was blended together and there were no big chunks of tomato paste or dark brown sugar. Then I let it simmer for 30 minutes so that it would reduce and thicken. In all I may have had it simmer for over an hour because I recorded the Dad.FM podcast right in the middle of my preparation.

Once it was completely cooked I set it off the burner to cool for a while. I don’t have a stick blender so instead I waited till everything was cooler and blended the sauce in the blender. This would chop up everything that was still fairly large so I would end up with 32oz of smooth, thick BBQ sauce. I put it into a jar and then to the fridge till it was time to slather it on the ribs.

I started the ribs on the grill about 4 hours prior to dinner. Next time I am starting either 6 or 7 hours out. You have to do ribs low and slow so that they get that fall off the bone properly. It also took me a while on how to figure out how to get the grill just to 250 degrees. I got that down after a little while. So I cooked the ribs by indirect heat for 4 hours and then finished them off on the grill. This photo right below was after about 3 hours.

After four hours I removed the ribs from the rack and took that insert into the house to clean. I put the ribs on the other side of the grill and turned up the heat. Then I slathered the sauce on one side and flipped the ribs. I did that with each half rack a couple of times. I kept everything flipping so that they wouldn’t burn.

Overall I think that the Dr Pepper® Cherry BBQ sauce really was tasty. It was heavily tomato based and the next time I think I will add more brown sugar, increase the amount of Dr Pepper® Cherry and decrease the amount of ketchup and tomato paste. I’d probably increase the Apple Cider vinegar to give my sauce a more sugary/vinegary taste. We rounded out our meal with some macaroni salad, cole slaw, corn bread and multi-colored fingerling potatoes that I also grilled.

After dinner we had our choice of two tasty frozen treats. I am a cookie fiend who loves M&M’s® Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches so you know what I picked. Maybe I’ll have a SNICKERS® Ice Cream Bar tomorrow night.

Click here to receive instant savings on M&M’s®, SNICKERS® Ice Cream Bars, Dr Pepper® Cherry, Skittles®, Pedigree Dentastix®! How are you going to make Summer Fun? What are you most looking forward to eating? When I think Summer, I think Food!

I loved the BBQ sauce so much I got a 12 pack of Dr Pepper® Cherry so I could make more anytime.