Messy Food: Hassle or Heaven?

Week 10:

Barbecue Beef Short Ribs

After several weeks in a row of great Sunday dinners, this one was a bit of a flop. It was a failure on a few levels. First of all, it is truly hard to get a good cut of beef short ribs (short of going to a butcher.) The selection was not great at the grocery store. The best ones that I could find were incredibly slim on the meat and heavy on the fattiness. I realize this is the nature of ribs, but I'm sure there are better cuts out there than what I got today. Anyhow, I liked the recipe that I used, found here:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Barbecued-Beef-Ribs-for-Two/Detail.aspx

I did make a few modifications though. First, I boiled the ribs for about an hour and a half to make them more tender. Other reviews on the site have noted you could boil them for even longer (up to 3 hours). I omitted the hot sauce and chili powder since I didn't have them. I also added a few shakes of mesquite flavored Liquid Smoke (that stuff is neat, by the way!) After putting it all together, I didn't feel that it looked like enough sauce to cover all of my ribs. To beef it up, I added some Sweet Baby Rays barbecue sauce in order to make sure all the ribs were fully coated. I cooked this for just short of an hour in a 350 degree oven.

The result was a great flavor and tender meat...just not enough of it! To me, it was just too fatty. After cooking for a few hours, I don't feel like I should have to work that hard to get at the food! The messiness and work involved made the ribs so not worth it to me. In my mind, the same goes for wings. I want to know your thoughts on this. Weigh in and let me know why you think what you think. I need some perspective.

Next week's Sunday Dinner will have a little twist. Since I'll just be returning from presenting at the ASHA conference, Jason is picking the recipe and doing the shopping for next week's meal. Maybe I can even convince him to cook it...


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