Transform our ribs, please
April 8, 2015 11:28 AM Subscribe
This weekend my husband and I made a rack of pork ribs, and have a lot of leftovers. How to not get bored?
The recipe we used was the America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Barbecued Sticky Ribs recipe (here, if you've got an ATK subscription--the short version is paprika, brown sugar, a bit of powdered chile, and your favorite barbecue sauce). Somehow we ended up with way more than we expected out of this one rack of ribs. At any rate, this means we've got a lot of tasty pork ribs sitting in the fridge and we're getting tired of them. What other things can we transform these into that will keep us from ignoring them until we throw them out? They are, indeed, sticky, slightly sweet, and taste deeply of smoked paprika.
Bonus points to things that I can heat up in the microwave at work and eat at my desk without getting messy (Sloppy Joes are out!). Due to their slow-cooker origins, the ribs by themselves end up with a bit of a weird, flabby texture when gently nuked even though the texture was fine fresh out of the slow cooker, so things in which they're chopped up and mixed with other things or drenched in sauce might work.
The recipe we used was the America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Barbecued Sticky Ribs recipe (here, if you've got an ATK subscription--the short version is paprika, brown sugar, a bit of powdered chile, and your favorite barbecue sauce). Somehow we ended up with way more than we expected out of this one rack of ribs. At any rate, this means we've got a lot of tasty pork ribs sitting in the fridge and we're getting tired of them. What other things can we transform these into that will keep us from ignoring them until we throw them out? They are, indeed, sticky, slightly sweet, and taste deeply of smoked paprika.
Bonus points to things that I can heat up in the microwave at work and eat at my desk without getting messy (Sloppy Joes are out!). Due to their slow-cooker origins, the ribs by themselves end up with a bit of a weird, flabby texture when gently nuked even though the texture was fine fresh out of the slow cooker, so things in which they're chopped up and mixed with other things or drenched in sauce might work.
Strip the meat off and brown in a frying pan with some oil. Put on top of tacos, pasta, or rice.
posted by just.good.enough at 11:51 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by just.good.enough at 11:51 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Chop up the meat and make a tex-mex kind of rice - tomatoes, peppers, corn, rice, beans, or whatever else you like to eat.
Buy a cheese pizza from the grocery store, put the meat on top, add veggies or pineapple if you like, and bake.
posted by lizbunny at 11:58 AM on April 8, 2015
Buy a cheese pizza from the grocery store, put the meat on top, add veggies or pineapple if you like, and bake.
posted by lizbunny at 11:58 AM on April 8, 2015
Strip off the meat and make tacos using lettuce leaves as the wrappers.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 12:02 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by pseudostrabismus at 12:02 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Put the meat in an omelet! With some cheddar or gouda, maybe some green onions...
posted by Weeping_angel at 12:06 PM on April 8, 2015
posted by Weeping_angel at 12:06 PM on April 8, 2015
Stew up some beans, chili flavoring, and add them to make a great Chili.
posted by nickggully at 12:12 PM on April 8, 2015
posted by nickggully at 12:12 PM on April 8, 2015
I don't...how do you...how many ribs did you make??
I can't even compute, but if I woke up in the middle of the night suffering from deep existential angst and realized I had individually frozen ribs in the freezer, I would absolutely eat one, straight out of the microwave, standing in the middle of my kitchen by the vent-a-hood light, and then go back to bed soothed.
Or you can put the meat in a omelette. I wouldn't even use cheese, just a drizzle of thinned sour cream or crema. Maybe avocado.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:22 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]
I can't even compute, but if I woke up in the middle of the night suffering from deep existential angst and realized I had individually frozen ribs in the freezer, I would absolutely eat one, straight out of the microwave, standing in the middle of my kitchen by the vent-a-hood light, and then go back to bed soothed.
Or you can put the meat in a omelette. I wouldn't even use cheese, just a drizzle of thinned sour cream or crema. Maybe avocado.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:22 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]
Quesadilla. Put some of the meat in the tortilla of your choice along with some good melting cheese (I'd go for smoked gouda) and some pickled onions**. You can make a whole batch of them at once and then take for lunch, or even freeze.
**Pickled onions: Thinly slice some red onions and put them in a jar along with a bay leaf, some oregano, and some peppercorns. Bring a couple cups of vinegar to a boil, along with a teaspoon of salt. (I prefer white vinegar, but you could use apple cider vinegar or wine vinegar.) Pour the boiling vinegar over the onions to cover, pop in the fridge, done.
They need to sit a couple of hours -- overnight is best -- and will keep indefinitely.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:08 PM on April 8, 2015
**Pickled onions: Thinly slice some red onions and put them in a jar along with a bay leaf, some oregano, and some peppercorns. Bring a couple cups of vinegar to a boil, along with a teaspoon of salt. (I prefer white vinegar, but you could use apple cider vinegar or wine vinegar.) Pour the boiling vinegar over the onions to cover, pop in the fridge, done.
They need to sit a couple of hours -- overnight is best -- and will keep indefinitely.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:08 PM on April 8, 2015
Response by poster: Lyn Never - it was one twelve-dollar, six-pound rack of ribs from Target! Untrimmed, so I had to hack off a good portion of the top (the recipe requests you stand them on end in the crock of the slow cooker and spiral them around--I spiraled the bit I hacked off along with the rest), and it was way more meaty than we expected. Given how many meals we're getting out of this thing, it was worth every penny.
Thanks, all! I'm developing a migraine right now, so I'm going to point my husband at these answers and let him decide what we should do.
posted by telophase at 2:22 PM on April 8, 2015
Thanks, all! I'm developing a migraine right now, so I'm going to point my husband at these answers and let him decide what we should do.
posted by telophase at 2:22 PM on April 8, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by sarajane at 11:34 AM on April 8, 2015