Friday, April 25, 2008

Chicken Cordon Bleu...kind of

I need some toothpicks. Or kitchen twine. And breadcrumbs.

Anyways, chicken cordon bleu is fairly simple--get some chicken breasts, cover one side with breadcrumbs (using the flour/eggwash/breadcrumb method), butterfly and pound to a uniform thin length, add ham and swiss, and roll it all up. Oh, and tie it up, or stick toothpicks through the seam so that it doesn't unroll on you.

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Sunday, April 6, 2008

Pork Ribs, Pt. III - Finishing up

Almost done! Once the ribs have been cooking in the slow cooker for about 8 hours, take them out, put a last brushing of barbecue sauce on them, and put them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. Why do we finish in the oven? Because the dry heat of the oven helps caramelize that barbecue sauce into the meat--otherwise, you'll have ugly, soggy brown ribs.

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Here they are, brushed with sauce and in the oven.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Pork Ribs, Pt. II - Preparation

Ribs, like any other somewhat tough meat, is best cooked low and slow. As in, use a low temperature, and cook for a really long time.

Ideally, I'd like to make barbecued ribs, but I don't really have access to a barbecue, nor do I have the ingredients or the experience. So I'm going to make "barbecue" ribs. Why the quotes? Cause I'm actually going to use a slow cooker and an oven.

But before we even start cooking, we have to do a bit of butchering. Spareribs are a huge cut of meat that can be broken down into 3 main parts, as you will see soon.

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Pork Ribs, Pt. I - oh god what did i do

I couldn't resist. The weekly Albertsons paper said that pork spareribs were on sale for 99¢ a pound.

So I bought a whole rack of ribs. Yeah.

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10 pounds of meaty goodness. Probably a bit less, since there are bones and all that.

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I mean, come on, how often do you see prices like that? Unfortunately, I've never actually cooked ribs before, so we'll see how it all works out this weekend...