Finger Licking Good - Short Ribs

Rocky's mouth watering Short Ribs recipe will have that special someone licking their fingers for more. Join Dr Wright as she finds out from Rocky how even a novice in the kitchen can easily create this melt in the mouth dish.

This is Dr. Letitia Wright for idcdating.com. IDC dating.com is where we're creating multicultural relationships every day. And I'm here with Rocky Fino. He's our sexy sex chef with the award-winning book "Will Cook for Sex." How're you doing Rocky?

I'm doing real good today.

Now, Rocky has been sharing with us some great recipes to have when we're dating, something that's great food, not a lot of work but yet it looks fantastic. So what's our recipe for today?

Today we're going to do some short ribs. These short ribs.

Short ribs, okay. Now, when we think about ribs, we think of barbequing. We think, "Oh my God, we're going to be cooking all day." Is that what's about to happen?

No, we're not even anywhere near the barbeque for this. The first vision of ribs is something like a baby back or a spare rib that's usually done on a barbeque. Short ribs are kind of different rib altogether.

Great.

Yes, I have seen them rise in popularity around restaurants of recent years. And what's interesting about it everywhere I go master chefs are always out challenging, trying to outdo their competition and they come up with all these crazy glazes and the wild sauces to go with the short ribs.

They're adding alcohol and everything.

Oh yes and they're trying to separate themselves from everyone else but when you get down to it and especially for us at home, the beauty of the short rib is the flavor is in the short rib itself. You don't need anything else.

That's a concept. We don't need all the lime juice and the alcohol and the this and that and the marinade. Do you ever look in the marinade section, it's 10 billion dollars.

Oh yes, and it's neat to see what the master chefs are doing in the commercial kitchens, but you know you would get exhausted at home trying to challenge yourself to do that and I'm telling you anybody that's ever had my short rib, they put it right up at the top of the list and I laugh, I smile, thinking to myself, "if they only knew, it's the short rib that's doing all the work."

Okay, alright. Well, let's go shopping. I'm really skeptical about this recipe. This is found hard from the gate.

You got it. Now, are you ready? We're going to get tough. We're going to do some shopping. Let's get short ribs.

Okay. How do I buy short ribs? How do I know what's good, what's not good, am I looking for lot of meat, a little meat? What am I looking for?

The short rib, it's an interesting style of rib. I have not seen a lot of variety. I've got a store by me that makes them very big and beefy. I don't how he makes them but very big and beefy but you might see it's based on the cut. You might see a longer cut on the bone or you might see one that's only like 2 inches long but thick meat or you know 4 inches long, but the name short rib, hence the small cut off of the bone.

So we're looking for 2 to 4 inches?

Yeah and depending on how many people we're talking about. If it's going to be the two of you, I'm going to recommend that you make extra anyway. This stuff holds in your refrigerator and/or your freezer for later. It's a great snack item to bring out. I mean if I'm ever cooking them, I make a few extra, you know few extra. Now there's a lot of bone involved.

Okay.

So when you're buying them, it sounds crazy when I say that we're going to buy like 4 pounds short ribs. But we're going to buy 4 pounds of short ribs.

But it's mostly bone, that 4 pounds of short ribs.

There's a lot of bone there and you'll be amazed how much you eat.

Okay.

That is how good they are. Now, so we've made the main ingredient, short ribs. Now it gets really cumbersome. We need to get two onions.

Two onions.

Just the regular yellow onion. We need about three cups of chicken broth so we're going to get a couple of cans of chicken broth.

Okay.

You should have some flour in your cupboard but if you don't, we're going to need about a half a cup of flour.

All right. Now, can we use wheat flour, white flour, what kind of flour?

You know I'm okay with the idea of you keeping away from the unrefined flours. What we're going to do is we're going to lightly brown the meat before we simmer it, so you can definitely get away with a different flour, a spelt flour if you're into organics, that's fine.

Okay.

Now, once again, you should have your salt, pepper and olive oil in the cupboard.

Absolutely.

And we're done shopping.

Wow, really?

This is one of the funnest recipes to go through with somebody because flour, olive oil, and salt and pepper you should have in your cupboard, and if you've already gotten that in your cupboard, you have to go to the store to buy three things, broth, onion and rib.

Exactly.

So what we're going to do, let's get started and this one, unlike a lot of recipes that I've given you before, this one requires some time. It's not a lot of work but you have to have some time. The meat, the essence of the short rib is to let it simmer.

Okay.

And soften the meat.

Okay. So that's how we get it all nice.

You want it fallin' off the bone.

Exactly.

You know otherwise it's very tough and people aren't too impressed, but if it's falling off the bone, it's delicious.

Okay. And simmering is what makes that happen?

You got it.

Okay.

So we are going to go home and we have about two onions and we are going to use about... I think for only 4 pounds you could probably get away with one onion.

Okay.

So, we're going to chop up the onion, you can chop it up into half inch squares.

That's nice and big.

Yes. Now, we're going to heat up a pan. Tablespoon of olive oil, put the onion on the pan and we're just going to soften the onion.

Okay.

Just get it until its translucent. While that's softening, place some flour on a plate or a cutting board and we're going to lightly flour the short ribs on all sides. So just kinda flip them around in the flour and then tap them on the edge once you pull them off and get all the excess flour off. We just want a light flour, we're not going for a big batter.

Okay. This isn't a deep fry?

No, we are just going to brown them before we simmer. Browning them, braising them, browning them before you simmer. I like it because I think there is an appearance to the meat that has a little crispy edge and also I think there is you know the texture when you're eating it. It makes a difference.

Okay.

Now, once our onion has softened, you can remove it from the pan and just place it on a plate for the moment. And we're going to use it later, but just set it aside, and then we can use that same pan if you like. Add another tablespoon of olive oil. You've got it over medium heat and we're going to brown the short ribs on all sides. Now, you probably won't fit them all in the pan at once so we can just do them in phases, however many you can fit in your pan and then once you've browned them on the side, we're going to set them into a deeper pot.

Okay. So we're going to brown them on all four sides. Get a bigger pot and put them in the bigger pot.

You've got it. Now, key here, we're not cooking the short ribs right now. We're browning them. So, you're not looking for a long period of time. You're just looking for the skin to get a nice color, nice texture on the edge of your meat, to get a nice color to it, you know a brown, crisp edge and the cooking aspect of it's going to happen in the simmer.

Okay. Got it.

This whole process, this initial onion softening and browning takes you probably about 20 minutes of time to get your ribs brown and your onion and we're going to put those, both the onion and the ribs, in a deeper simmer pot. It's not a huge deep pot if you've only got 4 pounds, you know if you've got one that's about a 6-inch deep pot probably work fine.

Okay.

Place them in the pot, add your chicken broth so you cover to get just the top of your last short rib in the pile.

Okay.

Add some salt and pepper.

And then we're going to...

We're going to bring that to a boil.

Oh okay.

We're just going to boil initially and then turn down the heat. After you got it to a boil, reduce the heat down to a simmer.

Do we put a top on the pot?

We'll put a cover on the pot.

Okay. We'll put a cover on the pot.

And let's just let them simmer. For 4 pounds, you're going to simmer for about two hours.

Wow, so the top is on there, we're going to be simmering and that's really the process of where people get the meat to just fall off the bone.

It's patience at this point, you know.

Okay.

Now, this is something I do. I could recommend this for the flavors really to set up and this happens to a lot of meats and stuff like that. If you were to do this the night before and put the pot into your refrigerator and let the flavors set up and bring that pot out the next day and reheat it, they'll be that much better.

Okay. Great.

You don't have to do it but it's a killer tip for the idea especially when you're talking about 2-1/2 hours, you know like wait a minute, I get off work at 5:00, we are not eating until 8:00 at night.

Exactly.

So this is something let say, you got a date planned for Friday night, well Thursday night, you simmer these and then you put them in your refrigerator, when you're done simmering and you bring them out and reheat them the next day. The overnight time allows the flavor to set up.

Okay, so the simmer time, it doesn't really cut the simmer time but it does really enhance the flavor.

It enhances the flavor. There's something to be said for allowing flavors to set up. My grandmother used to with her old Italian sauce. You couldn't have her sauce. It's like a three-day affair. Everything had to set up.

Okay. You can't eat it yet. Yes grandma!

That's right and it would be in there for two days and smelling it and I go "What do you mean we can't eat it yet?"

I see. I'm learning so much about the secrets of cooking.

The secrets of cooking and none of it's secret. You just got to hear it once or twice and you get the idea.

Exactly. So we're going to set those up and then we simmer it for two hours and then if we are able to do it the night before, we are going to put it in the fridge, bring it out, warm it up again.

Yeah.

And if we're warming it up again, how's our set up like that?

What happens when you let it sit overnight is you'll get the grease, it dries up the top.

Uhm.

And you will scrape that off, get your layer of grease scraped off and remove, then you'll see the white layer. People are pretty familiar with that. You remove that from the top and then just go back to the stove, bring it to a light boil and let it simmer after you bring it to a boil and reduce and let it go, it's going to take probably 15 minutes.

Oh wow!

When you reheat the meat's cooked, you're just reheating.

Okay.

Now, back to what you're looking for when you're simmering is you'll see the meat shrink on that bone and you're not going to be done until you see a fair amount of that bone.

Okay.

You're gonna need shrinking down on that bone.

Okay.

And when you go, one tester is to reach in there and if the meat kinda starts to pull and fall off the bone very easily, that's what you're looking for.

Got it. Okay, so we're looking to look in that pot, pull a little bit on one of them, see if it's just really melting off the bone, the way we want it to melt in our mouth and then we know that we're done.

Now what we're going to do, take these ribs when you got them done, take these ribs and move them to a plate, cover and keep them hot, and then cover with foil. Keep them hot. And you have the remainder of the sauce in the pot.

Uhm.

Use a blender, scoop the sauce into the blender with all the onion. Get that onion in the broth and all these flavors that are from the meat that's created in that sauce and we're just going to blender it for 10-15 seconds and that's the trick to how to make a creamy sauce.

Oh wow!

So now you got all your onion and everything in that creamy sauce and we're going to use that to pour on to your individual servings when you lay it out. When you blender it do add salt to taste.

Okay.

Kind of check it out. So, now what we're going do is I've have had you make 4 pounds. Now, let me give you a big time tip. If you're making it the night before, always get a little extra ‘cause there's no way they're going to the refrigerator without you sneaking a bite or two.

Okay.

So, we're going to lay these out, two to three chunks of rib on a plate. You've blendered your sauce, pour a little sauce over that rib and you're golden.

Wow, that sounds so delicious and what additional things are we goint to add? What's great to go with short ribs?

You know what, I like a myriad of vegetables. I think green vegetables are a perfect compliment. You know, a lot of people would take a mashed potato, a puree, a potato puree or a mashed potato and you know maybe place the rib on top and pour the sauce, it's a gravy-like sauce on top.

Uhm.

If you're a tradionalist they like the meat and potato type. You know the fare, that would be fine. Myself, I would put maybe a little asparagus stems or even broccoli, any vegetable that's just steams nicely will compliment it beautifully.

And we got to take the layer of fat off so we're actually making it a little bit more healthy.

Yeah, when you let it rest overnight, you get the layer of fat off pretty easy. If you're going straight that day to the dinner table, you can spoon off the translucent color on the top, other times you can get the fat layer off some of it that way. The short ribs do have a fair amount of fat in them, that's where the flavor is, that's why these things taste so wonderful on their own, you know, but this is a little guilty pleasure. They're not something you eat every night of the week but they're so good when you have them. And like I said I truly recommend you make extra because you'll find you'll keep hitting the pot and eat them. And they go so good to throw in your fridge for the next day. One of the tricks I like to use in my house is that I'll make extra, I'll pull the meat from the bone and then I'll freeze it. I'll package it and freeze it in its brothy sauce and I'll use that for other items later like putting pulled short rib on top of a toasted or something like...I'm getting away from the idea, but you can use this pulled meat on other items and you've made a long journey already there, you know by freezing it you've already done the 2-1/2 hour simmer. This is something now that you just heat up and you can add to other items.

That's often. We should talk about that pulled meat and how to add different things and maybe even how to work on the leftovers and how to make them great ‘cause I know people who can take leftovers and make them like you have a brand new meal.

Yeah, I know it's funny. Just get creative with what you've got in your refrigerator and freezer. I think the key to a lot of freezing items, what people tend to not understand is you want to get all the air out of it, out of your package.

Okay. Because that's what creates freezer burn.

Yeah, that's what creates freezer burn and even once you get all the air out you still kind of rotate your stuff in your freezer as much as you can.

That is why (inaudible)

Even the perfectly packaged, you know, piece of meat or fish, you know in due time it's not going to be tasting that great.

Yeah, it's not going to last forever, no matter what.

So always be looking in your freezer to see what you got there and keep it rotating.

Okay. That was our great short ribs recipe. This has been Dr. Wright and Rocky Fino for idcdating.com. IDC dating is where we're creating multicultural relationships everyday and now we're feeding them too! Remember, ignoring one's conscience is neither safe nor right, and I'll see you next time.

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