Super Bowl BBQ Pork Ribs

...with our won Standard Proof Texas Pecan BBQ Sauce, of course!!!

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Carolyn Donovan and Wan Chi Lau in Food, RainyDayKitchen // 0 Comments

The New England Patriots are BACK in the Super Bowl after a brief (“wicked brief,” if you’re an actual Bostonian) absence. They are playing against the Seattle Seahawks, and as it was eleven years ago, the Patriots are once again the underdog.

To celebrate the occasion, the folks in RainyDayKitchen decided to create a BBQ sauce to go with the pork ribs for the big game. The sauce needed to be bold, with a smoky flavor and a rich sweetness. The RDK crew ultimately settled on: Texas-style sauce for boldness, toasted pecans for smoky flavor, and aged whiskey for rich sweetness.

Standard Proof Whiskey

The secret of this sauce is the whiskey, and we chose the Texas Pecan Rye Whiskey from Standard Proof.

There are no artificial preservatives or flavors in this whiskey. The amazingly buttery, nutty taste comes from real, roasted pecans from San Saba, Texas – the world capital of Pecans!

Whiskey marinades enhance meat by tenderizing its fibers and intensifying savory flavors by adding a subtle, smoky-sweet caramel note. The alcohol also helps break down surface proteins, which allows ingredients like brown sugar, soy sauce, and spices to penetrate more deeply.

The Sauces

We have two different sauces for the Super Bowl Ribs.

The sauce on the left is sweeter and meant for the overnight marinating of the meats prior to the sous vide cooking. The sauce on the right is spicier and meant for “finishing” the ribs in the oven just before eating.

The key to a good BBQ sauce is the combination of ingredients that “activate” as many different taste buds (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami/savory) as possible, but in a ratio that brings out what is appropriate for the kind of meat being flavored. A lot of our cooking is by taste and feel…this sauce is no different!

What is in the BBQ sauce:

Standard Proof Texas Pecan Rye Whiskey – 1/4 cup
Heinz Ketchup – a good few squirts
Sriracha sauce – a good few squirts
Jalapeno, ginger, scallions
Texas BBQ sauce or whatever is in the fridge.

Prepared sauces such as ketchup and sriracha are already “balanced”, but adding fresh ingredients such as jalapeno, ginger, and scallions will brighten up their flavor. As for the whiskey, well…IT’S WHISKEY 🙂 It’s good in everything, LOL.

What is in the meat marinade:

Standard Proof Texas Pecan Rye Whiskey – 1/4 cup
Spicy honey – 2 tablespoons
Brown sugar – 1/4 cup

NOTE: The amounts of the various ingredients are COMPLETELY up to individual preferences and should be adjusted accordingly.

Marinating

The ribs needed to be marinated before the sous vide cooking because raw meat absorbs marinades better than cooked meat.

The technique allows for deeper flavor penetration while preventing moisture loss during the long, gentle cooking. The minimum time for marination can be as short as 30 minutes, but we find it’s best to do it overnight in the fridge.

Additionally, after overnight marinating, we like to slather the “finishing” sauce on the meat, then let it sit for a few hours prior to the sous vide cooking. We have found that this multi-step marinating process imparts the most flavor 🙂

Sous Vide

We sous vide-cooked the pork ribs in heavy-duty freezer bags, with the air removed using the immersion method (the pressure of the water against the freezer bags pushes the air out of the bags, at 145ºF for 18 hours. We find this time/temperature combo gives the best texture for “fall off the bone” meat.

Finishing

When the cooking is done, we typically “finish” ribs with a blow torch. This time around we found ourselves unexpectedly out of propane, so we roasted the ribs in the oven instead. While the blow torch gives the most control over the browning, the oven did a pretty passable job 🙂

It was clear when we cut into the meat that the ribs were cooked to perfection. Sous vide ribs are juicy, flavorful, and fall-off-the-bone tender. There really is no other way that ribs can be cooked this good ;-).

The sauce came out exactly as we had hoped: sweet, smoky, and spicy. The meat is juicy, tender, and oh so flavorful. We made enough for two seatings, one around noon for enjoying all of the pregame prognostications, commentaries, and inevitable look-backs at the previous Seahawk-Patriot Super Bowl. The second seating takes place an hour before the big game at 6:30 PM EST.