Don’t be fooled by the name – these short ribs never touch a barbecue – it’s all about the homemade barbecue sauce!

My grandmother was known to be an excellent cook especially when it came to baking.  Recipes were shared between friends when hosting lunches, dinners or potlucks and others were found and cut out from magazines and newspapers.  My grandmother passed away over twenty years ago but my mother recently gave me her cookbooks knowing how much I love to cook.  I inherited a collection of handwritten spiral-bound notebooks stuffed with recipe clippings.

I decided to make Betty’s Barbecued Short Ribs (recipes are always listed with the name of the friend who shared it).  It looks like it will be good and has a minimum of processed ingredients. I’ve also been interested in cooking short ribs as I’ve never tried it before but I see it in so many cookbooks and magazines.

So here are my assembled ingredients (except for the flour and the garlic cloves – oops). You can see there is ketchup – but that is pretty standard in a barbecue sauce. So really, considering my grandmother was collecting these recipes in northern Ontario in the 70s the fact there is no jello and no canned soup – it sounds like a winner already!

I didn’t need two whole packs of the short ribs so some were wrapped and frozen for a future meal.

I decided first to get all my chopping done. And it was really a minimal amount of chopping. I added one more garlic clove than in the recipe – but I like garlic.

I could just pop it all in one bowl since it all went in at the same time.

I chopped the short ribs up. I am ridiculously happy with how good this meat looks.

Now it’s time to brown the meat. I use two pans so I could brown without crowding. By the way – can I tell you how much I love the fact that the recipe just says ‘brown in fat’. I know that the recipes were made for her to follow – but I love that there are certain things that need to be known about cooking to make my Grandma G’s recipes. It makes me feel like I have a certain amount of kitchen knowledge. I chose to brown in canola oil for the high smoke point.

I loved the way this meat looked as it was browning. It looked so good. I loved the way it started to pull away from the bones and really got a good dark brown colour. It did not, however, take the 15 to 20 minutes the recipe said.

In the recipe it just kind of says to put all the other ingredients in at this point. I decided to pull the meat out and spend a minute toasting the mustard seeds then cooking the chopped veggies for a bit to pull up the browned meat bits on the bottom of the pan. Then all the other ingredients and the meat went in. and I was to simmer for 1.5 hours or more.

I ended up simmering it for closer to two hours because I was testing it to see when the bones basically fell out. It was smelling so so good.

At the end I pulled the meat out and made a slurry of flour and some tomato juice (or spicy V8 which was what I had on hand) to mix in and thicken the sauce.

I decided to serve it with simple jasmine rice and I put a few celery leaves on for some freshness and colour.  I would probably make this next time without the rice and with some good roasted vegetables or fresh salad on the side.

So how was it? Oh goodness… it was amazing. Grandma really came through on this one. It was like meaty heaven. It was so well balance and I could have eaten the whole bowl. I am salivating thinking about the leftovers in the fridge right now.

I will definitely make this again. It was so easy - I will probably make the recipe to the browning point and then do the rest in a slow cooker in the future. Short ribs will be a part of my repertoire from now on.

Thank you Grandma – this was deliciously yummy.

***
Recipe

Buy 2 lbs short ribs

Brown in fat until well coloured 15 to 20 minutes

Add:
2 tsp salt
1 chopped onion
1/2 cup celery
1/2 chopped green pepper
1 clove chopped garlic or scant 1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp mustard seed
1/2 cup catsup
1/2 cup tomato juice
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp vinegar or lemon
2 tsp brown sugar

Cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours or little longer.

Lift meat and bones out and skim fat off.

Thicken with 2 tablespoons flour and 1/4 cup tomato juice mixed.

Melissa's Notes: 

• It took much less time to brown the meat.
  
• I added two cloves of garlic.
  
• After browning the meat I toasted the mustard seed and then sweated the onion, green pepper, celery and garlic in the pot before adding everything else and making sure the brown bits were scraped off the bottom.
  

I decided to try making my first Jamie Oliver soup. I chose this one because I have a sweet potato soup recipe that I make quite often that I love. That one uses thai flavours and this one seemed to work on a similar sweet potato and spice formula so I thought it would be flavours I like.

Here are my ingredients.  See those veggies - this picture is deceiving because it doesn't look like that many veggies until you start chopping!

I put my broth on to boil - it was a bit premature. I ended up adding water as I thought I was boiling off too much of the broth as I chopped all those veggies!

Let the chopping begin! Basically you take all the ingredients other than the broth and spices and chop, chop, chop.

Chop, chop, chop! I'm not the speediest chopper (I'm no professional chef) but I'm not a super beginner either. It took me about 40 minutes to wash, chop (and peel when necessary) the veggies. However, the chopping is all you need to do really for this recipe so it is very easy for a beginner cook.

Once chopped you throw it all in your soup pot with the spices and oil and cook it down.

Here it is cooked down.

Then you add your boiling broth and simmer until the veggies are tender. I liked the step of boiling the broth - it makes it so fast. Most recipes you add the broth cold and then have to bring the whole thing to a boil.

Here is the soup after simmering.

Then we take our blender and blend. I have to say - the idea of blending meat is odd to me. It just seems wrong.

Here is the final soup - it smelled great!

I liked this soup a lot. The subtle heat from the chorizo was nice and built as I ate - it was delicious.

I froze a number of portions of this soup as it doesn't have any dairy or anything that would not take well to freezing. I've had this twice at work since I made it and I've had people comment on how good it smells.

I did find that a few times I got a chunk of fat from the chorizo that turned me off. Full disclosure - I was a vegetarian for almost ten years and I'm pretty picky about meat. I think I would love to put this through a fine mesh strainer so I still get all the flavour and have it just that bit smoother.

Jamie Oliver's Sweet Potato and Chorizo Soup

• 1 ¾ quarts chicken stock
  
• olive oil
  
• 2 large carrots, peeled
  
• 2 celery stalks, sliced evenly
  
• 2 medium onions, peeled and rough chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
  
• 1 ¾ pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and rough chopped
  
• 7 ounces chorizo sausage, sliced
  
• small bunch fresh parsley, fine chopped
  
• 1 heaped teaspoon Madras curry powder
  
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1 fresh red chile, fine diced
  

1. Bring the stock to boil in a saucepan. Let it simmer on the back burner.
   
2. Bring a large pot to medium-high heat. Pour in the olive oil. Put all the chopped and sliced foods (including the chorizo) into the hot oil.  Add the curry powder and mix it all up.
   
3. Cook until the carrots have softened but are not falling apart and the onions have turned a little golden, about 10 minutes.
   
4. Pour in the hot stock. Give the soup a stir and let it come to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the soup until the sweet potato is cooked through, about 10 minutes.
   
5. Season the soup with salt and pepper. Stir. Taste. Season it to your taste.
   
6. Blend the soup with an immersion blender (easiest) or by pouring it into a large blender or food processor.
   
7. Top with a bit of diced chile and serve.
   

This seemed like a good recipe to start with - it hardly seems fair calling it a recipe - it is a basic outline of a chopped salad from Jamie's Food Revolution  which Jamie then encourages us to play with however we wish.

Here are the ingredients. There is supposed to be fresh basil in the salad but my store was out. I thought I would throw in some pesto for the basil flavour. I also wasn't quite sure what "English mustard" was and didn't see anything on the shelf that looked right so I decided to either use Dijon or a sweet hot mustard I had (you can see both bottles at the back).

I only made a quarter of the recipe as it was for four and I was only eating as one! As you will see I will need a much bigger cutting board if I am to make this as a full recipe.

I started by chopping the scallion and cucumber. 

Then I added half of an avocado, some lettuce and sprouts (this is also when the basil would be added). This gets chopped together.

I added the optional cheddar cheese and chopped that in. My santoku knife would have been a good choice for this recipe because the avocado and cheese really wanted to stick to the knife.

At this point a well is made in the salad and olive oil, red wine vinegar, mustard (I used only the Dijon) and salt and pepper are added and mixed in with the salad.

I served it up with some apple slices as it called out for some contrasting colour!

You might notice I never added the pesto - I forgot about it and I'm kind of glad that I did. I don't think the salad was missing too much for not having the basil and I don't think pesto would have had the same effect.

What did I think? I really liked it. I'm actually not much for green salads because I find lettuce so boring and the "add-ons" that make salad tasty for me (dried fruit, cheese, nuts, dressing) always seem to defeat the purpose of a healthy salad. I really liked having the salad chopped up like this. It mixed all the flavours up and then there would be hits of old cheddar or creamy avocado. I have to say I was very happy. I'm looking forward to having this for lunch or a dinner accompaniment for the next few days!