Weeknight Spare Ribs

One of my goals is to get the whole family interested in what to have for dinner.  It is a lot of pressure to decide night in and night out what to make for dinner so it's a real treat when someone else makes one of the buying decisions.

This weekend, as we browsed the meat aisle for sales, Joey picked up a rack of pork spare ribs. I was a little leery about it because I was pretty sure ribs take several hours to cook and couldn't be made on a weeknight.

We got home and I took a quick search around the web and found this easy recipe from Martha Stewart.  It does take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to prepare but since Joey works closer to home than I do he was able to start the dinner and we finished it together when I got home later--I hardly had to wait at all!  We only followed Martha's cooking time and spices--we bought our bbq sauce.

These ribs were tasty, tender and a nice change for a weeknight. We also filled up on only about 3-4 ribs a person which seems small in usual times.  This would be good served with any variety of sides like greens, beans and bread.

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 1/2 lbs pork spare ribs
2 T chili powder
Salt & Pepper
BBQ Sauce - any style

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Rub the chili powder, salt and pepper all over the ribs.  Then wrap them tightly in a double layer of foil (so you don't get tons of fat on the pan).
3. Place foil packet on a rimmed baking sheet and cook about 1 1/2 hours or until ribs are fork tender.
4. Just as cooking time finishes, heat the grill** to medium
5. Remove ribs from oven and brush both sides with bbq sauce.  Grill 2-3 minutes per side and serve.

**Several people didn't grill these and just brushed with sauce and put the ribs under the broiler briefly. It would work fine if you're against using another appliance or if you have a charcoal grill and the turning on process takes a long time!

Slow-Cooked Beef Ribs

At the store this week I noticed some beef-back ribs hanging out in the meat section and on sale. I couldn't recall ever seeing these guys in the meat section before so I decided to snatch them up. 6 ribs for $5 seems like a good deal since when you go out for ribs 2-3 runs you about $12 with sides.

I had no idea how to cook them when I got home but thought I might use the crock pot. I searched for recipes high and low on the food network, martha stewart and google and came up with nothing. I don't know why it wasn't working.

So then I went on over to Crockpot365. This woman made a crockpot recipe each day for a whole year! I figured she probably knows what she's doing and followed her recipe omitting the green onions and using a little less than full bottle of bbq sauce.

My omitions did nothing to the final product, I thought the ribs were good although not that flavorful. My husband ate them but had nothing good to say about them. I recommend rubbing the ribs with some spices first to gjve the dish a little more flavor. I didn't really notice the onion or garlic at all. The presentation also looked a little gross. I recommend cutting the meat off the bone and then serving it. Cutting the meat off will be no problem, the meat was tender, moist and had a great texture. I would make these again with a few more spices...although since my husband didn't like them much I don't really see a future of making them again.

Country Style Pork Ribs

This weekend, while on a last minute dinner quest for butter, my fiance and I noticed a great sale on country-style pork ribs--only 99 cents a pound! We pounced on the opportunity and purchased a 5.44 pound rack.

That night, we scoured through my selection of slow cooker recipes and finally found just what we were looking for in one of my most helpful books. We chose this recipe because we only needed to buy two additional ingredients to make it! Overall, a very cheap dinner.

We chose Wednesday as the day to cook it up because the most diners were available to partake. My fiance and I knew we didn't need to eat 5 pounds of ribs ourselves, so on Tuesday night I organized all the ingredients and set them out so that before I left for work (by 7am at the latest) I could throw everything together in the crockpot--just set it, and forget it.

All the ingredients besides the meat and the onions were really just to make the sauce to cook it in--a basic bbq sauce. If you want to make this recipe even simpler, forget all the ingredients and just pour 3 cups of your favorite bbq sauce over the meat and onions.

These ribs fell right off the bone when they were done, but all the flavors from the cooking were completely lost, the meat was floating in a dark liquid filled with fat that fell in just like the meat. I didn't serve the liquid in the pot or the onions with the meat, instead, we used the reserved bbq sauce as well as a bottled sauce I had in the fridge to season up our meat. If you expect traditional bbq'd ribs, you'll be disappointed, but if you expect fall off the bone pork, you're in for a treat.

Country Style Pork Ribs

Ingredients:
1 large onion, thickly sliced and separated into rings
2 1/2-3 pounds of pork country style ribs--I used 5.44 pounds, so this might have had an impact on the extreme loss of liquid--I totally forgot to double the recipe as I had planned, but I doubt it made much of a difference
1 1/2C low-sodium V8
1 6oz can tomato paste
1/4 C molasses (my fiance couldn't believe I had this on hand)
3T vinegar
1t dry mustard
1/4t salt
1/4t pepper
1/4t dried thyme
1/4t dried rosemary

Directions:
Line the bottom of your slow cooker (mine is 6qts) with onion rings
Top with meat, cut into large chunks if necessary
Mix all the remaining ingredients together (should yield 4 cups)
Pour 3 cups of sauce over meat
Set the timer for 10-12 hours on the low setting (I did 10 hours)
Forget it.

Does anyone have any ideas of what to do with the leftovers to make a different meal out of it?