Rib Fest!

Tonight we had ribs for dinner. LOTS of ribs. Nathan has been agitating for us to have ribs for quite awhile now. I have not been as excited about it because frankly, ribs aren't my favorite. Really messy, and mainly a barbeque-y taste. Meh. But they are his absolute favorite, and he always orders them in restaurants of possible. He has already forewarned me that ribs was going to his request for his birthday dinner, so we needed to figure out how to make them before that day came!

Ribs were on sale this week at our local grocery store for $1.99 a pound, so I bought 2 racks--over 12 pounds total! Back when we had thought we were moving overseas, Nathan a nd I had culled a bunch of really old Taste of Home magazines, tearing out any recipe we thought we might try at some later point. We also tore out every single rib recipe we saw. We sorted through those this afternoon and discovered there were 2 basic trains of thought as to how to cook ribs. One side says to just put them in a pan and roast them for a long time. The other side says to boil them first and then roast them for a little while longer. We decided to do a taste test.

So, one rack I cut into smaller pieces and boiled for 1 hour with some onion and vinegar (not sure what the vinegar did, but the recipe said to add it . . .). Then I put the pieces in a pan, covered them with barbeque sauce (we just used Kraft Hickory or something--I did not feel like making my own), covered the pan with foil, and roasted them at 325 for 1 1/2 hours more.

The second rack I put in my huge roasting pan bone-side down. I sprinkled garlic, salt, and pepper on them, covered them with foil, and roasted them at 350 for 2 hours. Then I drained the fat and poured barbeque sauce over them and roasted them for 30 more minutes, covered.

The general consensus was . . . they were both delicious! Well, Caleb actually didn't like either one, but he said it was because he doesn't like barbeque sauce. The thing was, these ribs really didn't taste a lot like barbeque sauce, unless you put some on your plate and dipped pieces into it. They had a very good flavor! The other boys and Bob liked the ones that were roasted the whole time better. They were indeed incredibly tender. I couldn't even lift the rack onto a platter without the bones just falling out. This made it not so messy to eat because you weren't wrestling with bones and gnawing on them, much to Nathan's disappointment, LOL.

The ones that were also boiled were very good as well. I think I might have prefered them just a tiny bit, but since it was certainly easier to just roast them the whole time, I am just fine with that method being the winner, LOL. They were not quite as tender, in that the bones didnt jsut slide out quite like the other ones did. They were still very tender, however.

Out of those 12 pounds of ribs, I would say we have maybe 1/4 of it left over. Definitely not enough for another meal. We have some big rib-eaters! Even Faith had thirds! What a piggy! She doesn't usually love plain meat, so you can see these must have been good. I'm just glad we have found a winner of a recipe this far before Nathan's birthday. Of course, he's going to say we need to keep practicing . . .

Speaking of birthdays, tonight I'll be making the cheesecake for us to take to Bible study tomorrow night to celebrate Luke's birthday! We are also planning on making a few peanut butter cups and caramels. This afternoon, after CC, we headed down to the cake and candy supply store, which is about 30 minutes away. We drove up and saw to our great disappointment that it has closed! Oh no! I guess I'll have to start ordering my chocolate over the internet. I ran over to Michaels later this afternoon and picked up a few bags of their Wilton chocolate discs. I guess we'll see how they compare in quality with the ones I usually use. Of course, when you are talking homemade peanut butter cups and caramels, who really cares?! I'm sure they'll still be yummy!