Saturday, April 21, 2012

Barbecued pork ribs....oh, my!

This is what we had for supper last night:

Now that's a rack of ribs!

I marinated the ribs (recipe to follow) and then put them in the oven, covered, for a couple hours at 300 F.  I turned the oven off and let them sit there until the hubster, Master of the Grill, got home.

 The dogs enjoyed the pan drippings.

I'd planned using my homemade kickin' barbecue sauce for these ribs, but didn't realize that we'd used it all up last time we made these, and I had a long list of chores to do and didn't have time to make another batch in a hurry.  I'd just grated some fresh ginger and froze it for both tea and for making marinades....I was thinking something teriaki-ish....so this was on my mind.  It had to be quick, though.
The last of the garden garlic until July or so.......

It was.  I simply coarsely chopped a head of garlic and mashed it with my mortar and pestle with a slightly larger amount of ginger root and a generous amount of sea salt.  I sauteed that in some bacon grease....probably about twice the volume of the total of the first three ingredients.  I didn't brown it, just sweated it a bit to infuse the grease with the flavors.  

 I wish you could smell this!

Then I whisked in an equal amount of raw apple cider vinegar.   I used some of the vinegar to rinse the last bits of flavor from the mortar and pestle.

Nothing is wasted here!  Not even fumes of flavor!

The hubster brushed some reserved marinate on the ribs as they were grilling.

See how easy this is?

The flavor of this marinade was wonderfully subtle, and the goodness of the pastured pork really shone through.  Amazing.  There were no leftovers.

*Drool!*

For anyone just venturing into cooking from scratch, I hope you can see how easy this was.  The initial cooking in the oven is an easy way to get perfectly tender meat that doesn't dry out on the grill.  Then the grilling itself is mainly for browning the meat and adding more flavor by brushing on additional sauce.  There are many ways to approach barbecued ribs, but this one is pretty fool-proof and it takes very little time....just the marinating and par-baking, which can be done the day before if needed.  

Veggies were also simple....just fresh asparagus sauteed in a cast iron skillet in bacon grease and generously sprinkled with sea salt.  Dessert:  Black bean cake with chevre and berries.  A perfect simple meal to end a perfect day.



2 comments:

  1. Hope you have planted more garlic this year, so you will make it through next year. I've still got lots of garlic and onions left, but the squash just did not keep (too much water) nor did the potatoes.

    DH's turn to cook tonight, so I'll have to wait and see what is served.

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  2. I did plant more, almost twice as much, so hopefully we'll have plenty. We didn't get any onions last year, the sets stayed pretty much the same size so I made them into wine. I still have some scallions in the freezer, however. And I need to start harvesting this year's scallions.

    Hubby is cooking tonight, too. I'm going out to get some raspberry shoots now, free, from a friend. Gotta dig them and plant them tonight before the big rain comes tomorrow!

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