Dateline: June 14, 2021 Ribs, Corn and Salad

I had a rack of ribs from FD and left over grilled corn from the day before.....(grilled marinated shrimp, corn, asparagus, and salad).

It was a rainy afternoon, so no grilling.  I wanted a spicy rib with a touch of sweetness and a little acid.  This was a tough one to create a rub for, but I figured it out!

Rib Rub

1 T dark chili powder

1 T salt

1 T smoked paprika

1 T Swerve (this is a sugar substitute that is heat stable and measures 1-1 with regular sugar)

1 t ancho chili powder

1 t chipotle chili powder

1 t ground cumin

1 t ground coriander

2 t ground mustard

1/4 t ground allspice

1/4 t white pepper

1/2 t dried thyme

1/2 t ginger powder

1 t black pepper

Additional Ingredient, not in rub, but sprinkled on top of ribs before going into the oven.

~1/4 t Citric Acid or Sour Salt

Method

1.  Mix all ingredients together be sure to crush any lumps.  

2.  Remove membrane from the back side of the rack of ribs.  Use a table knife to start it and a paper towel to pull it back.  It should come off in 1 or 2 large sheets.

3.  Cut any lumps of fat from either surface.  In a pan, put the ribs meat side up.  Spray with cooking spray or rub with oil and generously apply rub.  It is called a rub, so gently rub it into the meat.  Do not neglect the bone edges.  Flip so bone side is up and repeat spray and rub.  The majority should be on the meaty surfaces.

4.  Flip so meat side is up.  Sprinkle ever so lightly some citric acid over the top of the rub.  This supplies an acidic quality, slight, that helps cut the fat of the ribs.   Put into a 350°F oven until an instant read thermometer reads 198-200° when inserted between bones, without touching bone.

5.  Slice into individual ribs, bet your bib out, and chow down. 

 

These were EXCEPTIONAL ribs.  Crunchy, spicy, slight acidic background.  Just delightful.  This was the first time I tried the citric acid on the ribs.  It will not be the last!

Dateline: December 24, 2020 Xmas Eve, Ribs and Broccoli Rabe

I rubbed the ribs with a quick dry rub of a mix to chili powder, ancho, chipotle, salt, sugar, paprika, dry mustard, allspice, black pepper, and thyme.  (I forgot to use onion and garlic powder, sue me!)

I roasted them in a hot oven 400° F for 20 min, then reduced temp to 325° for another 45 minutes to an hour.  When temp of ribs reaches over 185° F, they are good to go.  High temp will produce softer and less chewy meat.  Dealer's choice.   

The ribs came out juicy and pulled back from the bone ends.

An animal died, Bill was content!

Pre oven ribs, with an extra sprinkle of salt on top.

                                                     Post Oven, and cut into individual ribs

For the rabe, I sauteed garlic slices until golden brown in olive oil, and then removed.  I added the cleaned rabe, cut in half, to the hot pan and seared them for a little bit.  I added about 1/2 c of stock and cooked them down further.  Before serving, I added back the garlic chips and tossed.

Dateline: September 20, 2020 Ribs and Panzanella

olive oil

I love the tail end of summer for the tomatoes alone.  I pulled a rack of baby backs from the freezer and used Penzey's Tsardust Memories rub on them.   I have never used it before and thought I should try it as I keep getting freebie packs with orders.  Shameless plug of Penzey's, they are a fabulous spice store.  They carry all sorts of interesting things, multiple types, are reasonable, and when you weigh price against quality, quality wins every time.  

Ribs

1.  Remove membrane from back with a table knife to start it, and then getting a grip with a paper towel, pull it off as best you can.  You don't have to do this, but as I am going to smoke them, the smoke penetrates better when I do.  Remove any large deposits of fat and save for sausages!

2.  Lightly oil both sides and liberally dust with the spice powder of your choice.  Rub it into every nook and cranny.

Method

I used the 3-2-1 method of smoking.  That is 3 hours at about 225°F, lots of smoke, then wrap them, and put them back on the smoker for 2 hours, and finally, unwrap and get temp up to 325-350 to crisp them up bit.

                   Check out the smoke ring!  Yeah, Baby!

Panzanella Salad

2/3 loaf of yesterday's bread, sliced into thick slabs                 and drizzled with olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, grated or pressed

1 -1.5 lbs of nice ripe tomatoes, cut into bite sized pieces

1 sweet onion, sliced into half moons

lots of basil leaves, torn

lots of parsley leaves, torn

salt

pepper

cumin

smoked paprika

red wine vinegar

Method

1.  Grill the bread until slightly charry and crisp.  Cut into bite sized pieces and put into a bowl large enough to hold everything.

2.  Top the bread with the onions, then the parsley, then the tomatoes, then the salt and pepper, cumin, and paprika, add the red wine vinegar and mix well.  Allow to sit so the bread absorbs the vinegar and tomato juices.  After an hour or so, taste a little bit.  Add more vinegar, salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over salad, add torn basil, and mix well.  Let sit, and taste again.  Adjust according to your tastes.  You can use sherry vinegar instead of red wine.  I like the pungency of the wine vinegar.

Nota Bene:  The ribs were incredibly tender and juicy.  I really liked the play of the sweetness of the rub with the ribs.  They were not overly sweet, just a touch along with some heat.  A very nice combo.  I may need to buy a big bag of Tsardust Memories.

The salad was wonderful.  I did need to add more salt.  I really like the crunch of the bread and don't care for the ones that homogeneous much of tomato pulp and bread mush.

Dateline: August 28, 2020 Ribs with Sauce, Broccoli, and Crunchy Salad

My order from FreshDirect came this morning.  In it were 2 racks of pork ribs and a boneless pork shoulder.  The shoulder was cut into two 3+ lb. chunks.  One frozen for another purpose, to be decided, and the other chopped up and mixed with chorizo spices waiting to be ground.  Tomorrow's project!

Tonight, I took one of the racks of pork ribs and coated it with a pig rub variation.  

Rib Rub II

Ingredients

1 T guajillo chili powder

2 t kosher salt

1 t ground cumin

1/2 t ground coriander

1 t dry mustard

1 t smoked paprika

1 t ground black pepper

white wine/shoju/sake

Tomato Based BBQ Sauce for Ribs

2 c tomato sauce, preferably homemade, with any bay leaves removed

1/3 to 1/2 c cider vinegar

2 T chili powder

1 T agave syrup

1 T molasses

salt to taste

Methods

1.  Mix rub ingredients together well, set aside.  Set oven to 350° F.

2.  Dry off ribs, and remove membrane from bones.  Trim off any excess fat and freeze for sausages!

3.  Rub the rub all over the ribs, coating each side and edges and rubbing in well.  Place in a shallow sheet pan and put into oven for 1 hr and 10 minutes.  At about 35 minute mark, pour enough wine/shoju/sake into the bottom of the pan to create a shallow lake.  This will create a moist environment where the ribs will steam as well as roast.

4.  While the ribs are cooking, get a sauce pan and add 2 cups homemade tomato sauce (preferably a marinara sauce or equally straight ahead tomato sauce).  To the saucepan, add a good glug of the cider vinegar, chili powder, and the agave syrup.  Stir well and taste.  Add salt, vinegar, more agave or chili powder.  Bring to a slow simmer.  Use an immersion blender to blend everything together.  Taste again.  Add molasses and another glug of cider.  Stir and bring to a simmer again.  Reduce to thicken.  Taste and adjust, if necessary.

5.  After 70 minutes, pull ribs out and coat the top with a couple of hefty tablespoons of the sauce.  Coat the ribs evenly.  Raise the oven temp to 500° F and return ribs to over for about 15 minutes or until the sauce has set and is beginning to darken on the meat.  

6.  Remove ribs to a cutting board and separate them into individual ribs.  Serve with the remaining sauce on the side.

Uncut and waiting for the main event

Cut up and ready to eat

Sauce to the left, and broccoli, steamed to the right

Go to crunchy salad, cucumbers, onions, celery, peppers, tomatoes dressed with sherry vinegar and olive oil

The ribs were really, really tasty.  Easy eating, little resistance and nicely spicy.  I am usually not a sauce girl, ever, but the mood struck me as I was hunting through the fridge and saw the containers of tomato sauce from the other night.  It was an excellent stroke of genius, I might add.  Sweet, just barely, tart, moderated, spicy, pleasantly, and thick!  Will try the sauce again in the future.

Dateline: July 19, 2020 Smoked beef ribs, hurry up style

I had taken a 4-bone package of beef ribs out of the freezer, perhaps a little too late to fully smoke on the grill.  I coated the bone side with Willy's One-Derful rub, and on the meat side, I used Detroit Barbecue Rub that a friend had given me.

This got onto the smoker around 1 pm, which meant that dinner would be pretty late.  

I pretty much just sat around outside dead-heading flowers and trimming the trees.  I would escape into the house to cool off and then go back with water in hand.  

By 6 pm, it was clear that I needed to goose up the temp if we were going to have dinner before midnight.  I pushed it up to 350° F and hoped they would not dry out.  Luckily, when the meat reached about 180° F, I was willing to pull it off and use more than our teeth to eat them!  

all rubbed and ready for smoker

Bad girls off the grill

Check out the smoke ring

They were not quite tender enough, but very tasty and thoroughly enjoyable.  Lesson learned:  you can push your smoker around, it will do what a smoker has got to do!  Get over your timetable!

We ate it with grilled corn on the cob and crunchy salad.

Dateline: May 20, 2020 Ribs With Rub-A-Dub-Dub

I had ordered a single rack of St. Louis style ribs from FreshDirect, and that is what arrived.  A rack that was maybe as large as a baby back order.  No worries, I was going to rub and smoke today.

The Rub

1 T Hungarian Paprika

1 t chipotle chili powder

1 t ancho chili powder

1 t Galena Street rub from Penzey's

1 t salt

1 T brown sugar

2 t onion powder

2 t garlic powder

1 t black pepper

1 t mustard powder

1 t lemon pepper

Mix together well, especially to blend in the brown sugar.  Hold to the side

The Ribs

Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs.  Rub the rack all over with worcestershire sauce both front and back.  Coat and rub in the rub on both sides and set aside while you start up the smoker.  By the time the smoker is up to temp, the ribs will have developed a wetness to them as the meat absorbs the spices.

Set up your initial temperature to be between 225° and 250° F.  When the smoker is up to temp, add the ribs and close the lid.  Leave it alone for a couple of hours.  Keep in mind the old adage:  If you are looking, you are not cooking.  Monitor the temp to be sure that the smoker doesn't go wacky and shoot up to 300° F.  After about 4.5 hours, flip the orientation of the ribs.  Meaning move the right side to the left, or if you are using a rib rack, top to bottom.  

At about 6 hours, use an instant read thermometer to check that 1) the temp is around 185 - 200° F, along with 2) the bone ends are starting to poke through, 3) when you grab 2 adjacent bones and pull in opposite directions, the meat tears, 4) holding the rack in the center using tongs, it flops in half, threatening to tear in half.  Any 2 of the 4 can indicate cook time is done.

Remove from the smoker and cut into individual ribs.

Sit down and eat!

Check out the smoke ring....corn was smoked too!A

The ribs had a nice chew to them.  The end ribs were a little more done, and had a pleasant crispiness to their edges.  The rub had a wonderful, well, to me, smokey-sweetness to it that was addictive.  I ate more of them than I really needed to!  Followed up with a lovely salad and tonight was a little slice of heaven on earth!

Beet, feta, onion, red bell pepper, tomatoes, and lettuce salad

Dateline: April 18, 2020 Jonesing for Chinese food

Unfortunately for us, there are no Chinese places doing take out near us... insert sad face here.  So I had to rummage through the freezer and found some baby back ribs.

I just finished rubbing the ribs with a bbq-type rub, chili powders, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a touch of sugar.  I put them into the oven at 350° F with the convection on.  In an hour, I will check on them.  I glazed the ribs with a mix of oyster sauce, hoisin, and chili crisp all mixed together and smeared on the ribs before kicking the temp up to 500°F for 8 minutes.

To round out the rest of the meal, I foraged through the refrigerator and grabbed a bunch of veggies, kale, sweet peppers, scallions, broccoli, onions, garlic, ginger, and preserved tian jin vegetable.  Everything got chopped up and is waiting for the ribs to be almost done before I stir fry everything together.

scallion greens, onions, broccoli and peppers

tian jin vegetable, rinsed

ginger slivers, scallion whites, sliced garlic

kale, chopped

rice flakes

Before I oil my wok and start stir frying, I will need to soak the flakes for 5 minutes, then boil for a few minutes then add to the stir fry with veggies and condiments.

Frying the aromatics

Adding the veggies to the mix

The finished product with the rice flakes

As a salad to go with this is spicy cucumber, Chinese style.

cukes in their spicy bath

To flavor the dish, I will add a tablespoon or 2 of pixian paste, some chili oil, some lao gan ma chili crisp along with some chicken broth, a glug of shaoxing, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and a splash of black vinegar.  The rice flakes soaked up all of the lovely juices so there was little to no sauce left in the wok.

top, cut up ribs, middle stir fry, bottom cukes

The boxes are to hold our ipads as we have a zoom dinner/feast with a friend in a few minutes.