Ribs. Beer. Boom.

Yesterday morning I woke up to find that my man and his friend who had crashed on our couch (this is a different friend from the one who usually sleeps on our couch, but who’s counting) had, the previous evening, left two almost-full bottles of Corona undrunken when they—wait for it—crashed on the couch. (YES, "UNDRUNKEN" IS A WORD, I JUST MADE IT A WORD.)

Gentle reader, I largely do not live my life in accordance with societal conventions, or ethical standards, or...well, probably the less said on this topic the better—but I do have one inviolable rule governing my household and existence in general: YOU DO NOT WASTE BEER. So, I did what anyone else would do in this situation, and dumped the leftover beer into the slow cooker along with some bone-in spare ribs (sprinkled with salt) and a squirt of barbecue sauce.

Slow-Cooker Pork Ramen, Ignorant American Style

Gentle reader, I do NOT love a rainy night. Not when it’s raining, like, buckets. (Although it is exciting when the storm drains on my street are clogged by litter and the street floods and I can legitimately say I live on waterfront property.)

But when life gives you rain, you make comfort food. So I perused a few slow-cooker pork ramen recipes online and then, as is my wont, ignored like 90% of their instructions and mashed up the rest according to my own whim.

Adventures in Slow Cooking: Baby-Back Ribs

Gentle reader, you may have noticed that I am no longer numbering installments of the Adventures in Slow-Cooking series, as it has become readily apparent that they are accumulating too quickly to keep track of, and I was told there would be no math on the blog. I don't even like measuring ingredients.

Anyhoo, baby back ribs in a slow cooker, you can’t beat that. Especially if yours, as mine were, are labeled as “pork loin back ribs,” which just sounds so deliciously dirty.

I severed and peeled off the membrane (that plastic-wrap-like layer on the back of the ribs) and rubbed into the meat a dry rub consisting of the usual suspects: kosher salt, paprika, garlic powder. Kept it simple. Let it sit in fridge overnight.

Short Ribs With Kielbasa and Polenta: A Dish to Die For

I love short ribs over polenta. As previously noted, I like to slow-and-low-cook short ribs in the oven the night before and then reheat, for 3 reasons: (1) You can prep them while you make a quicker meal for that night; (2) You can skim off a congealed layer of grease when you take them out of the fridge so you don’t hate yourself as much; and (3) My kitchen does not have space for a slow cooker, are you kidding me. Barbie’s Dream House seriously has more kitchen square footage than mine, and I am not adjusting for scale here, people.

Anyway, the other week, I preheated the oven to 250° or so; dredged my short ribs in garlic powder, kosher salt, and paprika; and browned them in olive oil in my Creuset saucepot before adding an 8-oz. can of tomato sauce, some chicken stock prepared from the carcasses of recently documented roast chickens, and the remains of a bottle of red wine I had in the fridge. Then I put the covered pan in the oven for a few hours.

It was only later that it occurred to me that the fact that the wine bottle’s cork had a festive Santa hat topper meant that it had been sitting in the fridge for almost exactly one year, since my holiday party was scheduled for that coming Sunday. This concerned me. Actually, my immediate thought was OH MY GOD I’M NOT READY TO DIE OF FOOD POISONING, I HAVE SO MANY THINGS LEFT TO EAT, BUT IF MY DEMISE IS AT THE HANDS OF SHORT RIBS AT LEAST MY LOVED ONES CAN CONSOLE THEMSELVES BY REMINDING THEMSELVES THAT I DIED DOING WHAT I LOVED.

So anyway, the polenta recipe...

Curry-Rubbed Lamb Ribs

Two years ago this time, gentle reader, you could not get through a restaurant review in a New York–based publication without encountering the R-word: “recession.” And we're still feeling the culinary repercussions of that market meltdown.

See, back in the '09, with the economy a bigger hot mess than a school-cafeteria Sloppy Joe, the sanctimonious contingent of the Brooklyn restaurant scene (think seasonal/local/sustainable/blah-blah-blah) eagerly embraced the frugal, down-home aesthetic of “upscale comfort food”—often, a euphemism for “We buy cheap cuts of meat and cook them for a long-ass time, and for that we will charge you in the vicinity of $20 for a small but beautifully plated portion of some obscure, newly acceptable part of the animal.”

The economy has theoretically picked up, but this credo of Brooklyn restaurant cooking remains rampant. And while I love rich, slow-cooked, meat-based dining—and respect the bargain-hunter impetus behind it—I resent the massive markup. So I was excited when I saw a 4-pound breast of lamb ribs—a cut I had tried only twice, each time at trendy Brooklyn restaurants that shall remain nameless, since I genuinely enjoyed and do not want to badmouth them—for $4 at a market on Washington Ave.

Lifelong lover of lamb though I am, I was utterly unfamiliar with preparation methods for this cut, and hence worried about my ability to cook down the significant layer of fat without drying out the meat. But for $4, I decided to go for it. I'd say this should serve one or two people.

Ribs!

Last week I headed down to Tampa, FL to visit my fantastic sister who was freshly home from an overseas deployment. A few weeks before my trip, I was reading through an issue of Bon Appetit, and saw that during the weekend I would be down in Florida, the 2010 Gulfcoast Rhythm & Rib Fest would be taking place in Palmetto. I confirmed with Annie that Palmetto isn't a prohibitive distance from Tampa, and we were in!

I have only recently (in the past few years) experienced ribs. Some good friends of mine here in Brooklyn are pretty astute barbecuers and smokers, and I have had the good fortune to be included in the "I've had ribs on the smoker since 10 am, come over and bring beer" call-to-action texts that circulate before spontaneous summer barbecues.

As a kid, I don't recall ever eating ribs, so I was excited to take my newly acquired appreciation for ribs to the Rib Fest and see what different Rib Masters had to offer.