Barbecue While You Shop: Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs

I don't mean you can make ribs in the oven or grill while you shop online. You can, but this is better. The weather is great for a minute! Go outside!

These ribs cook while you're gone at work, while you're asleep, while you're hanging out with your kids, or while you're wandering Soho, checking out the sales at the art supply store and Sur la Table. I highly recommend the latter. (Though I think I managed to buy the only thing in there that wasn't discounted.)

I really think slow cookers are worth the counter space, especially for busy folks. And I have precious little counter space. A lot of people have visions of mushy stews and everything tasting the same when it comes out of the crockpot, but really, anything that you braise can be slow-cooked, especially if you're willing to do a little prep work.


They may not be for the purists among you, but for the rest of us, these ribs are tasty, and cheap, and easy. Isn't that a worthy trifecta?

Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs
Serves two

1 full rack pork spare ribs, trimmed and cut in half
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
2 oranges
1 lemon
2 bottles of beer
1 dried chipotle pepper
1 18-oz (or so) bottle barbecue sauce (I recommend Stubb's)
hot sauce for serving

Rub ribs with paprika, garlic powder, and chili powder. If you have time, refrigerate after rubbing for 1-3 hours. Zest oranges and lemon. Juice oranges and lemon, adding juice to the slow cooker. Crumble chipotle and add to slow cooker. Bring ribs to room temperature if you refrigerated them. Brown each half of the rack of ribs on both sides in a heavy skillet. Add first half to slow cooker, pour a little barbecue sauce on top, then add second half. Add beers, then top off with more barbecue sauce. Add about 3/4 of the bottle of barbecue sauce total. Ideally ribs will be just submerged in liquid. If you have time, cook ribs for 10-12 hours on low. This way they will be most tender. If not, cook for five hours on high. Remove ribs from liquid (discard liquid), serve with the rest of the barbecue sauce and hot sauce.

If you're preparing these overnight, refrigerate ribs submerged in the cooking liquid (in a casserole, not your slow cooker insert) during the day. Before heating, remove fat from surface. Reheat in the oven, finishing with a quick broil to crisp them up if you want.

Slow Cooker Lamb and Lentil Soup

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At Fromaggio in Essex Market, I spied a box of French Puy lentils for eight dollars. Seriously? Eight dollars for lentils? I knew if I brought them home Matt would be unimpressed. Unless, of course, they sprouted into a magic beanstalk.

Luckily, I live near a little Indian market with shelves piled with inexpensive spices (amchoor powder, anyone?) and dried goods. Squelching my desire for a collection of curry powders and mango pickles, I scored a cheaper bag of pretty green french lentils and headed home to look at recipes.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm stingy with my homemade stock. We can only store a few containers of it in our teeny freezer, and I hate to be caught without any. It's hard to deem an unknown recipe stock-worthy. (Remember Elaine carefully budgeting her sponges on Seinfeld? It's like that...sort of.) So I was pleased to realize I could make a huge pot of hearty lentil soup while still saving some stock for a winter cold. I used lamb to deepen the flavor of the tomato broth, and spiked it with a little sake (sherry would work great if you have it.)


In a flash of inspiration before I served this up, I added a bit of homemade pesto to the pot. I save this in ice cube-sized portions in the freezer, and it deepened the flavor nicely.

I hate to give exact times in a recipe for slow cookers. You alone know how hot or slow your machine cooks, and how mushy you like your lentils. In my six-quart Cuisinart slow cooker, this took a long time. You could probably speed it up by cranking up the heat. Or just go about your business and let it cook all night and the next day unsupervised. That's the beauty of these things.


Slow Cooker Lamb and Lentil Soup
Serves at least 4 with leftovers

2 lamb shoulder chops with bone or about 1 pound other stew meat
1 strip bacon, chopped roughly
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 cup chopped mushrooms
1 clove garlic, chopped roughly
3 carrots, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon harissa (optional)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried basil or a bunch of fresh basil leaves if you have them
1/2 teaspoon oregano
freshly ground pepper
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes with liquid
3 cups chicken or turkey stock
2 teaspoons sherry or sake or wine
1 cup green lentils
2 tablespoons prepared pesto
Pasta (corkscrews or shells are good)
grated cheese for serving
Salt and pepper

Place first twelve ingredients in the slow cooker. Pour tomatoes over. Fill empty can with water and add that water to slow cooker as well. Add stock, sherry or sake or wine, and lentils, stir, leaving meat on the bottom of the pan. Cook on high one to two hours, depending how hot your slow cooker is. Turn to low and cook at least 8 hours. Check lentils and carrots at this point. If they seem too crisp to you, keep cooking. When ready to serve, remove meat from bones and discard bones. If you like, whir this for thirty seconds with an immersion blender to thicken the broth, or blend a few ladlesfull in a food processor. Leave the rest chunky. Stir in the pesto. Boil water on the stovetop and prepare pasta according to package instructions, a large handful per person is plenty. Place pasta in bowls and ladle soup over, garnishing generously with grated cheese, salt, and freshly ground pepper.

Feeding a Crowd: Make-ahead Brunch

Mission: feed ten people (including vegetarians) a brunch feast including sweet and savory on a Sunday morning without panicking, running out of burners, wishing you'd moved to the suburbs where they have real kitchens, or missing out on the fun once your friends show up and start mixing mimosas!

With mushroom sauce already made and in the fridge, grits cooking overnight, and french toast soaked in custard and ready to bake, we sat around this morning calmly drinking coffee. No last minute pancake-flipping, no slaving over a waffle iron—it's always best to make food that multiplies easily for a crowd. We popped everything in the oven as people arrived. Kielbasa would have been cooked on the grill, if we hadn't run out of propane at that very moment (doesn't that always happen?) It was fine, really, since I'm sure those kielbasa went a long way toward seasoning my less-broken-in cast iron pan.

These sorts of events make me wonder: will we get as much joy-per-square-foot out of our home when it's, say, twice as big? When we no longer work and sleep and cook and hang out in one room?


Make-Ahead Brunch Menu for Ten

Overnight Slow Cooker Grits
Mushroom-Sauce Baked Eggs
Kielbasa
Baked Cafe au Lait French Toast (recipe here)
Fruit Salad
Bialys with Lox from Russ & Daughters)
Pom-Orange Mimosas
Coffee

I would definitely repeat these eggs, though I'm not sure about the french toast. The bitterness of the coffee was pretty good when balanced with maple syrup, but it didn't thrill any of us. My tip for overnight french toast is to soak the bread overnight in about 3/4 of the custard mixture, reserving the rest to pour over the top the next morning after the initial amount has been absorbed. These can bake in the same oven as the eggs.



Pom-Orange Mimosas
One bottle sparkling wine, cava, or prosecco
2 cups orange juice (freshly squeezed is great!)
1 or 2 cups pomegranate juice

Mix in pitcher and serve in flutes!


Slow Cooker Grits
2 cups stoneground grits
9 cups water
1 T butter
about 1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Combine grits, water, and butter in electric slow cooker. This cooked on low for 10 hours. Different brands of grits and slow cookers will vary, but after 10 hours these were not quite done and had not absorbed all the liquid. We turned it up to high for about 20 minutes, then took the lid off and stirred while the water evaporated a bit for another 30 minutes or so, adding the cheese as the texture got thicker.


Earthy Vegetarian Mushroom Sauce
1 T butter
splash olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 medium yellow onions, chopped
1 T fresh herbs (I used sage, oregano, and rosemary), chopped
1 teaspoon or so concentrated tomato paste (I like the kind that comes in a tube)
2 pounds crimini mushrooms
3 large portobello mushroom caps
1 cup wine (I used white, but red would be great if you have it around)
sprinkle curry powder
sprinkle dried oregano
pinch sugar
1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar or a little less
salt and pepper to taste
Splash milk or cream
1/4 cup yogurt or creme fraiche

In a large dutch oven, saute onions and garlic in butter and olive oil over low heat a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms. I did half of them into medium sized slices for a nice texture, while the other half were diced smaller for a finer sauce. Add the tomato paste to the pot and stir until the onions are coated, this will help them caramelize a bit. Add the mushrooms as you slice them and stir to incorporate. Add wine, fresh and dried herbs and spices, sugar and balsamic, stirring and cooking on low-medium heat until mushrooms look fully cooked. Add salt and pepper to taste. (At this point, I cooled the mixture overnight to reheat the next morning.) Reheat sauce if necessary, stir in milk and yogurt.


Mushroom Baked Eggs
Mushroom sauce (see above)
12 free-range eggs
Freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Split sauce between two ovenproof glass dishes (a pie plate works fine). Make indentations for eggs. Crack eggs into indentations, grind pepper on top and bake for 10-15 minutes. Do not overcook—they may not look as done as they are! Serve on top of grits.

Maiden Voyage of the Slow Cooker: Hoisin Garlic Ribs

Picture from Crate and Barrel

My fiancé Matt is quite good with presents. When we first started dating, he gave me a weekend subscription to the New York Times, which saved me a painful pre-coffee trip to the newsstand and suggested to me that he might be interested in sticking around for a few more weekends. My parents were totally impressed (perhaps that was the real goal.)

Since I've gotten more interested (obsessed) with recipes that involve lowww and slow cooking, I may have mentioned once or twice that a slow cooker would be a worthy addition to our kitchen. Also, my friends Laura and Adam made an AMAZING brisket in their slow cooker that I just might have praised a few times. Matt knows how to take a hint, and since my birthday we've had a slow cooker on our counter just waiting to be tested.

While I love my dutch oven and will continue to use it frequently, I don't love leaving the oven on for eight or twelve hours at a time. And I don't love being stuck in the house for that time, either. I've noticed that slow-cooker recipes online are somewhat limited to Sandra Lee-style easy recipes, but I think the electric slow cooker absolutely has a place in the serious gourmet kitchen.

For her maiden voyage, I rubbed St. Louis style ribs (sawed in half by the butcher at Whole Foods) with garlic, ginger, and ground sichuan peppercorns. After a bit of marinating (but no browning), I threw them in the slow cooker with three sliced onions and about two cups of liquid (sake, beer, hoisin, sriracha, fresh orange juice, honey, soy sauce.) The ribs cooked for about 12 hours on low while I slept. It was a little weird waking up to the smell of garlicky chinese food, but amazing to literally have dinner cook on its own. No stirring, no worrying. I refrigerated the ribs in a baking pan with the liquid and skimmed the fat when I got home. After a bit of covered reheating in the oven, I brushed the ribs with a mixture of hoisin, sriracha, honey, and orange juice to sweeten them up a bit. After glazing, we crisped each side in a hotter oven for about 10 minutes.

And they were pretty incredible. The meat fell from the bones into our mouths—you couldn't really nibble. The meat was falling apart, the bones were falling apart, and the taste was rich and intense, balanced with the sweet and spicy glaze. We had planned to finish watching a movie while we ate, but these ribs were so good we couldn't concentrate on anything else. Plus, it's hard to read subtitles while you're licking your plate.