Slow-Cooker Braised Shortribs

When we got the ingredients to make the chili we had to buy more meat than we really needed. We had a little over a pound of short ribs left and the same with the chuck roast. Unfortunately, both chuck & short ribs are the kind of meat that you have to cook for lots of hours to make it delicious to eat and quite frankly, during the work week I don't have a bunch of hours for anything besides working and driving.

Luckily, this is where my old friend the slow cooker comes in handy. Recently I had a sad meal with the slow cooker that involved a power outage. Planned or not I did not think of it when I plugged the cooker in the morning and only realized something was wrong when I got home and it didn't smell like dinner; only to find a note on the door from the Gas Company that they turned the power off--at 10am.

I was a little hesitant to do a slow cooker recipe again because I was pretty sure there would be some freak situation in which a power outage would happen. It didn't happen! I got home and dinner was warm and still smelled delicious.

As it turned out these were good but not amazing--it needed something and I cannot place it. I only sort of followed an epicurious recipe from my phone because the original recipe called for mushrooms and I felt it didn't have enough flavor, plus I had 1/4 of the meat.

1.5 lbs bone-in short ribs

salt

1 picnic-sized bottle of merlot (or whatever red wine)

1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes

1/4 chopped onion

4 cloves garlic, smashed

2 bay leaves

3 carrots

1 T oregano

1. Salt ribs

2. Add all ingredients to the crock pot

3. Cook on low 9 hours

4. Be contented with a warm meal when you arrive home. This would be good on mashed potatoes or with dipping bread