Camping, Princess Style

[Shelby]

Thanks for the inspiration.  Those ribs look delicious!  I think I have some beef ribs down in the basement freezer that I never look in lol.  I need to get those out.  

 

 

I don't think either of you should change your ways.  It's not a bad thing to have an array of choices for meals.  It's not a bad thing to buy if you're worried you won't run across it again.   I'm definitely the same way.  I'm sure some of it is living out in the sticks and not wanting to not have something that I want to make for dinner that night.  I'm also sure Covid upped my hoarding game too.  Regardless, life is too short.  Buy the fun stuff.  Save it for a special day--or make an ordinary day more special  

[Tropicalsenior]

8 hours ago, Smithy said:

I pulled out this carefully vacuum-packed, cherished rack of beef ribs

I love beef ribs and that's something that I just can't find down here. I don't know what they do with them because I can't imagine that these cows don't have ribs.

Years ago I worked at the Reno Press Club and it was situated in a prime rib restaurant. At night they served nothing but Lobster and prime rib and for lunch they served prime rib sandwiches with the leftover meat and barbecued ribs from the racks. I still remember them as the best ribs that I haven't have ever eaten.

I use the leftover fat to make roux. I melt the fat and add an equal amount of flour and cook it until it is the color of that I want. Then I cool it enough to make it into small rolls like we used to make for refrigerator cookies. You can then keep it in the freezer in Ziploc bags. When you want to use it as roux just cut off what you need and pop it back in the freezer. It's great for thickening stews and soups and making gravy. The most flavorful type of fat is that that you skim from your oxtail soup.

[Kerry Beal]

5 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

Well, I wouldn't dare try to speak for Anna but in England where she grew up the dripping would have been on bread, I'm sure.

 

 

I'm sure if we look back we can find proof of that! I know I used to drop the drippings over for her if I did a rib roast or roasted some rib bones. 

[FauxPas]

3 hours ago, Shelby said:

Thanks for the inspiration.  Those ribs look delicious!  I think I have some beef ribs down in the basement freezer that I never look in lol.  I need to get those out.  

 

Ha, I have some beef short ribs in the freezer also. Thanks to you and @Smithyfor the reminder. 🙂

 

Just went and go them out. They are nice meaty-looking ones but were marked down to half-price. A great deal because they tend to be quite pricey these days. 

 

I'll let them thaw in the fridge overnight and cook them for dinner tomorrow. Probably braise in a red wine sauce. 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Wildly enthusiastic about this French laundry inspired short rib recipe.    Requires a little preplanning but the result is stunning.   

 

ETA the sound track is deafening in this video.   Turn down sound on your apparatus.

Edited Tuesday at 05:31 PM by Margaret Pilgrim (log)

[ElsieD]

26 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Wildly enthusiastic about this French laundry inspired short rib recipe.    Requires a little preplanning but the result is stunning.   

 

ETA the sound track is deafening in this video.   Turn down sound on your apparatus.

You've made this?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

20 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

You've made this?

Oh, yes!   It’s my “go to” for a Knock their socks off” dinner party.

[ElsieD]

8 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Oh, yes!   It’s my “go to” for a Knock their socks off” dinner party.

It looks amazing!

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Wildly enthusiastic about this French laundry inspired short rib recipe.    Requires a little preplanning but the result is stunning.   

 

ETA the sound track is deafening in this video.   Turn down sound on your apparatus.

 

As @ElsieD said, it looks amazing. Thanks for the link to that video -- and the warning about the audio volume! Maybe I'll try making this sometime. He had me at flaming the marinade. 😄 I was intrigued by his explanation that the alcohol "cooks" protein and that's why you flame it off. I know in other applications it intensifies and enriches the sauce flavor, but I hadn't thought about its effect on protein structure.

[Smithy]

On 4/22/2025 at 6:35 AM, Tropicalsenior said:

I love beef ribs and that's something that I just can't find down here. I don't know what they do with them because I can't imagine that these cows don't have ribs.

Years ago I worked at the Reno Press Club and it was situated in a prime rib restaurant. At night they served nothing but Lobster and prime rib and for lunch they served prime rib sandwiches with the leftover meat and barbecued ribs from the racks. I still remember them as the best ribs that I haven't have ever eaten.

 

My darling and his first wife ran a restaurant for a while on a resort in Northern Minnesota. They'd buy whole rib roasts with the bones still on, and she would cut the ribs off (with generous amounts of meat attached), retie the roast to the rack and roast it all, then save the cooked ribs as the rest of the roast was sold as prime rib. Every so often, when they had enough ribs saved up, they'd advertise "All you can eat Texas ribs". Of course it was a big seller. Their trick to not running out? A generous salad bar, and plenty of "cooking time" for the already-cooked ribs to be warmed, so that most customers filled up on salad and bread first. 😀 

 

I should perhaps explain that in Minnesota at least, "ribs" means by default pork ribs. "Texas ribs" is the term for beef ribs. It may exclusively by a Minnesota thang.

 

Of course, when you're in Texas it's the other way around. We used to get funny looks when we'd ask in Texas for Texas ribs, and after a few corrections along the lines of "you mean you want RIBS" we learned. (Similarly, I used to be baffled by the label "California burger". I mean, don't all burgers automatically come with lettuce and tomato, and maybe pickle?)

 

On 4/22/2025 at 6:35 AM, Tropicalsenior said:

 

I use the leftover fat to make roux. I melt the fat and add an equal amount of flour and cook it until it is the color of that I want. Then I cool it enough to make it into small rolls like we used to make for refrigerator cookies. You can then keep it in the freezer in Ziploc bags. When you want to use it as roux just cut off what you need and pop it back in the freezer. It's great for thickening stews and soups and making gravy. The most flavorful type of fat is that that you skim from your oxtail soup.

 

Thank you very, very much for this tip. I have a lot to work with here, and now it won't go to waste.

 

[MaryIsobel]

4 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

I'm sure if we look back we can find proof of that! I know I used to drop the drippings over for her if I did a rib roast or roasted some rib bones. 

My grandfather was from Scotland, not England but apparently drippings on bread was a great treat - the usual fare was jam on bread, also known as "a piece." His family lived above a shop and apparently he would stand on the street and yell up "Ma, throw me down an piece and one for Jimmy too."

Edited Tuesday at 07:37 PM by MaryIsobel (log)

[Smithy]

7 hours ago, Maison Rustique said:

@Smithy, I swear we must be related. My freezers are the same. I have been an over-buyer for decades. I remember my Mom asking once if she had somehow made me food-insecure because I was a food hoarder. I did go through some times in my adult life as a newly divorced single person when I lived on fried egg sandwiches because that was all I could afford. I think it might be more of a FOMO--I see something new or interesting and worry that I'll never find it again so need to buy it even if I have no plans to cook/eat it. I'm not sure how I got like this, but I'm really trying to change my ways.

 

I thought of you and this conversation when I read today's "Luann" comic strip. 😀 

 

https://www.gocomics.com/luann/2025/04/22

 

And thanks to @Shelby for continuing to enable us!

[Smithy]

4 minutes ago, MaryIsobel said:

My grandfather was from Scotland, not England but apparently drippings on bread was a great treat - the usual fare was jam on bread, also known as "a piece." His family lived above a shop and apparently he would stand on the street and yell up "Ma, throw me down and piece and one for Jimmy too."

 

I hope he was good at catching things thrown to him!

[MaryIsobel]

2 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

I hope he was good at catching things thrown to him!

Well he turned out to be an awfully good baseball player when they moved to Canada... Maybe catching a piece helped with that.

[Smithy]

Reach. Grasp. And what the heck was I thinking during those recent shopping trips?? Now I have to do something with this stuff!

 

 

Starting with washing and chopping it, and right now it's so hot that I just want to lie under the air conditioner. I broke down and turned it on a little while ago.

 

In other news: I remembered today that I'd forgotten to show you my Easter treat, purchased some time ago in a fit of self indulgence.

 

 

Poor bunny should have been in cold storage. You could say it lost its temper. 

 

Ears tasted good anyway. I still have about half of this one, now in the refrigerator.

[Dave the Cook]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

 I was intrigued by his explanation that the alcohol "cooks" protein and that's why you flame it off. I know in other applications it intensifies and enriches the sauce flavor, but I hadn't thought about its effect on protein structure.

The recipe does look good, and since it's based on a Thomas Keller dish, I'm not surprised it's socks-knocking. But this idea of flaming off the alcohol because it "cooks" the proteins is kind of BS. 

 

I assume this is based on the recipe in ad hoc at home. In that version, there's no mention burning off the alcohol at all. It's probably a refinement (?) introduced between book publication and the creation of the Keller Masterclass featuring the dish. 

 

It is true that alcohol can "cook" (which is another way of saying that it denatures) proteins. For this to happen, you need alcohol in a concentration of 20% to 50%. In the video, the cook uses a 50/50 combination of red wine and port. Most red wine is 12 - 15% alcohol; port is 18 - 20%. That combination (which is not in the Keller recipe; that calls for just red wine) is not going to get you to 20% alcohol.

 

Anyway, guess what else denatures proteins. Cooking. So it's going to happen anyway.

 

But now I want short ribs. Headed to the bank to take out a loan.

[liuzhou]

4 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

My grandfather was from Scotland, not England but apparently drippings on bread was a great treat - the usual fare was jam on bread, also known as "a piece." His family lived above a shop and apparently he would stand on the street and yell up "Ma, throw me down an piece and one for Jimmy too."

 

Indeed, bread and dripping was common throughout the UK, not just England. 

 

I grew up in Scotland and until I moved to London at the age of 18, thought that "a piece" was the standard English  to say anything on bread / any kind of sandwich. If no filling or topping was mentioned, jam was the default. The use of the word with that meaning is mainly western Scotland.

 

 

[Tropicalsenior]

One of my husband's favorite things was thick crusty bread dipped in the pan drippings from a roast and fried on a cast iron skillet.

Carlos says that growing up in Nicaragua, they used to spread lard on thick slices of bread and toast them on a stick over the wood cooking fire.

[Tropicalsenior]

5 hours ago, Smithy said:

and she would cut the ribs off

I've worked in several restaurants that cooked the prime rib on the bones and trimmed them off later. The bones would then go into the bin. That always just about killed me. All that wonderful juicy meat going to waste.

[bokreta]

That reminds me - back in the pre-Orban days when I spent a quite a lot of time in Budapest folk bars, the most common bar snack was zsiros kenyer (forgive the lack of diacriticals!), or "fatted bread". A slice of bread smeared liberally with the melted fat of salt pork, diced onion, and paprika. Damn tasty, and incredibly cheap.

[FauxPas]

 

Well, my short ribs went back into the freezer before they had really even started to thawed.

 

Had to go to grocery store and saw some lovely chuck patties at the grocery store for a song, bought them and husband says he's been hankering for a grill night since weather is so lovely now. So we'll invite some friends and do a burger and beer night. 

 

We'll do a toast to Russ, @Smithy!  💕 🍺🍔💕

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:18 AM by FauxPas (log)

[Shelby]

On 4/21/2025 at 11:57 PM, Smithy said:

That's not bad for 3-1/2 years.

I found my ribs  --I have you beat

 

 

Sell by 9-10-2020--oopsie.  I knew they were old but I didn't think they were that old lol.  Wouldn't find them at that price now.  They are thawing out in the fridge--hopefully they aren't freezer burnt.

 

[KennethT]

I've got all y'all beat - I've got a whole side of wild caught Florida grouper as well as some pork shoulder steaks, all vac packed, that are many years pre-Covid!!!  Every time I see them at the bottom of my chest freezer, they look ok - no freezer burn, but I still don't know what to do with so much grouper and we've been "eating healthy" for a while so I don't know what to do with about 6 pounds of pork shoulder....  so they sit!

[FauxPas]

16 minutes ago, KennethT said:

we've been "eating healthy" for a while so I don't know what to do with about 6 pounds of pork shoulder....  so they sit!

 

I buy pork shoulder steaks just so I can make Filipino Pork Adobo. I trim some of the fat and serve it with rice and steamed veggies, it doesn't have to be too unhealthy.  🙂

 

I pretty much do mine this way, but only add a bit of brown sugar at the end. 

https://thewoksoflife.com/pork-adobo/

[FauxPas]

 

Wow, these last comments make me wonder: when do you folks think something from the freezer is too old to be cooked?

Or is it only based on freezer burn? 

 

I admit I have thrown things out that are over a couple of years old, but maybe I am being overly careful?  🙂