I Want My Baby Back Ribs

I love baby back ribs. For some reason, I'd been intimidated about making them. I finally took the plunge when I saw how easy it was on one of the Food Network shows. Basically, I rubbed the meat with a store bought spice rub (Stubbs) and brown sugar. Make sure to use dark brown sugar, and not light brown, which I mistakenly used. Cook in a deep pan and add some water to it. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 250F for 2 hours.

Since it took so long to cook, I made this the night prior and grilled it the next day. To warm the meat after removing from the refrigerator, I let it sit in a warm oven before grilling. Baste it with your favorite BBQ sauce and grill for about 15 minutes. The meat was so tender when it went on the grill that it feel apart, so it might help to cut the rack in half prior to cooking.

On the side were the remainder of the potato medley with chopped garlic & parsley in grape seed oil, and sauteed corn, roasted red pepper and smoked turkey sausage.

Ken enjoyed this more than he thought he would, because he thought there wasn't going to be much meat or be too fatty and found it quite the opposite. We had everything but the ribs left over. This is a keeper. I found some more ideas on how to make ribs online, which I hope will give them more flavor (minus smoking).

*3/28 Update. I made this again today and made a change to the dry rub. In addition to the Stubbs and brown sugar, I used Lawry's seasoning salt, smoked paprika, and a small amount of cumin powder, and cooked it in beef broth with some water. We also had some beef ribs and didn't cook it quite as long, so the meat wasn't fall-off-the-bone. Regardless, they tasted better this time.

Happy St. Patrck's Day!

So I attempted to make corned beef and cabbage in celebration of Ken's Irish heritage. I picked up a brined packet of corned beef from TJ's and put it in the slow cooker according to the instructions on the packaging while we were at work. As for the cabbage, the suggestion I found online for a traditional Irish meal was to add it to the corned beef broth, but after a few minutes, I didn't like the idea of everything tasting the same so I took it out and sauteed it instead. And an Irish meal wouldn't be complete without potatoes. TJ's had a colorful medley of tiny potatoes, which I baked with grape seed oil, garlic salt and rosemary in the oven.

Ken really enjoyed the corned beef, as well as my dad. For me, the flavor was pretty good but not the smell...something about all the brininess didn't appeal to my nose.

Hamburger w/ a Twist

I bought some herb chevre cheese because I've never had it and was curious as to what it tastes like. Unfortunately, it's not my favorite to eat for a snack. Since there's still quite a bit left (even for a small tube), I wanted to use the rest and thought it'd be interesting to incorporate it into a burger. I cut about 1 tbsp of it and mixed it with about the same amount of chopped scallions, then stuffed it in between ground beef that I've added about 1 tsp of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to. Although I added some garlic salt to the ground meat, it could've used more. To top it off, I cut a piece of a herb foccacia bread the same size as the patty and lightly grilled it with garlic butter. It was different but tasty nonetheless. The chevre worked really well this way.