Friday, April 15, 2011

RIBBBBBBBBBS! and sausage

I suppose we should get this out of the way.

This is not your regularly scheduled program.

I am not Mike, The Cartman, Stewart, Stew or whatever you call him. However,  I am a fan of the "other" white meat and all of it's delectable incarnations. I go by Corippo, Crypt, or Adventure Wannabe and I am very excited and happy to be able to report to on my own Joy of Pork. Now I am a newbie to this whole foodie world and am just beginning to hone my skills. I am attempting to try new things and have put a tremendous amount of effort into improving my cooking in all areas. I will say, flesh is my true passion. I love everything about a great piece of animal. The smells, the textures, crackle of heat transforming it into a toe curling explosion on your tongue...Whoa! Got a little off track there. Now that we are introduced...

Recently I was going through a Men's Health magazine and fell in love with a pic of some Asian BBQ ribs. I had to have them.  Best thing about this was they were not going to be difficult to prepare. I put together a dry rub of Chinese Five Spice, Chipotle powder, Cayenne pepper, garlic powder and salt. Massaged that into a nice rack of St Louie style ribs and let it seep into the rack in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Now I was a bit worried that these ribs called for a slow oven only (I am a HUGE fan of the grilled finish!) But I went ahead and trusted the Men from Men's Health and slow roasted them at 250 for three hours and then dropped the temp to 225 for another two hours. 5 hours of roasting!! My house smelled incredible!! F&$^*#IG INCREDIBLE!!!! Like an angel orgy in my nostrils!
Took the rack out and removed the foil tent that trapped all their wonderfulness and basted them with a Hoisin - Black Bean based sauce. Then placed them back in the oven at 400 for 10 min. The ten minutes turned the sauce into a glaze that transformed my rack into a copy of what I fell in love with in the magazine. When I added the sesame seeds and sliced scallions they looked exactly like the photos, and I have never made a recipe that looked like it was right out of the pages I was inspired by.
Needless to say I was excited and had high expectations for my ribs. Especially as they began to fall off the bone when I lifted them off the roasting sheet. All my expectations were fulfilled. My rack of ribs were simply blessed. It was a great combination of moist tender meat, spicy Asian glaze and spices. The only change I would make would be to cut back a bit on the Chinese Five Spice as the anise was a bit strong for my taste.
Overall I was very pleased with my new creation, one little adjustment and I have an incredible, simple rib recipe whose only real requirement is time. Not a bad trade off really.
Since him can't seem to make the time to get on and update this project that he started. (My reader I must warn you, him good at starting things, not so much at following through and keeping at them...except his boat) I guess I will. I requested a fresh sausage for our morning meal and he was more than willing to provide. So we got some pork fat and a shoulder roast.
Into the grinder it went after a cool down in the fridge. We added a bit of spices from what we had in the kitchen and formed up some patties. Quite easy, but I soon found out worth every bit of the effort. We made a handful of patties for everyone and they barely touched plates before they disappeared into the gullets of the hungry firefighters waiting at the table.
A happy side effect of making this sausage was that we made a few pounds of it and packaged it to freeze for later use. Nothing like having scratch made sausage at your disposal, it will brighten your day at the very least.

As you can see this is one of the happiest times of his life. Few things can make him as smiley as a bowl full of meat getting ready to eat.
Well I don't know if I'll be invited back, but I hope that you enjoyed my take of The Cartman's Porcine Paradise.
If you would like to hear more from my perspective let him know. He can either ask me back, or direct you to one of my blogs. Oh and here is the New School Asian Ribs recipe.

Happy Hog Hunting!!!

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