Texas Oven Baked Pork Ribs

A chilly winter Sunday evening here for us and I had a hankering for some summer-time food for dinner (really,  just out of ideas and I got these ribs on sale and thought they'd make a great Sunday dinner).

Ingredients:

• 6 pounds baby back pork ribs
• 1 1/2 cups White sugar
• 1/4 cup Salt
• 2 1/2 Tbsp. Ground black pepper
• 3 - 4 Tbsp Sweet paprika
• 1 tsp Cayenne pepper, or to taste
• 2 Tbsp Garlic powder
• 1-2 tsp chili powder

Directions:

1.  Clean the ribs, and trim away any excess fat. In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar, 1/4 cup salt, ground black pepper, paprika, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, and garlic powder. Coat ribs liberally with spice mix. Place the ribs a large dish, laying ribs next to each other in the dish. Cover, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours. (Had success with the dry rub marinated for 4 hours.)

2. Remove ribs from the refrigerator. Wrap each rack of ribs in heavy duty foil (2x). Very important to wrap tightly so it doesn't drip while cooking.

3. Preheat oven to 275 degrees F (135 degrees C). Bake uncovered for 3 to 4 hours, or until the ribs are tender and nearly fall apart.  We like the top of the ribs to be a bit crispy so I placed each foil package of ribs on a cookie sheet and opened each foil pack so the ribs were exposed and baked another hour. Serve as is or with your favorite BBQ sauce. We like them both ways (dry or brushed with BBQ sauce).

 Dry Rub Ingredients: 

Sugar, Salt, Pepper, Paprika, Garlic Powder, and Cayenne

Place Dry Rub on Ribs. Wrap in foil and place in fridge for 4 to 8 hours or overnight. Note: They do get messy when they bake in the oven so I like to place foil on the bottom of my baking dish/cookie sheet.

 Ribs out of the oven after 4 hours .. meat is so tender and juicy. yum!

 

 Dinner is served with skillet potatoes (sliced potatoes cooked with a bit of butter, onion, salt & pepper), corn on the cob and grapes. Made for a nice summer-like dinner during the winter!

Give this recipe a try. Real easy to make as long as you have the 4 hours of cook time. :)

Enjoy!

Puff Pancake

 

Ok, it's only been a couple days since I said I was going to start cooking light. Well, a house full of teens for breakfast this morning changed things a bit. But I did serve fruit and low-fat, low-salt bacon for the girls. However the puff pancake with a 1/4 cup of butter brought us over the edge (just a bit - It was shared amongst 6 people, so not too bad).  This was my first time making a puff pancake, and hands down it was a winner! It's kind of like french toast, and it's kind of like pancake.This is a keeper for us.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup butter

Directions:

1. Place butter in a baking dish and pop into a 200C/400F oven.
2. Whisk eggs and add milk, sugar, flour and vanilla extract.
3. Remove baking dish from oven and swirl to coat sides with butter. Pour batter into it and return to oven.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until puffed up and golden. Serve immediately as it will deflate once out of the oven.

Sleepover Breakfast!

Split Pea Soup with Ham

It's the new year and once again I am going to try to eat healthier. As you know, I love to cook so I'm going to work real hard on cooking healthier foods and plan to share some healthy recipes with you.

My family is extremely busy with after school activities, sports, etc. so it can be hard to keep on track with healthy meals during the week. So I'm trying! Tonight we will be having Turkey Sandwiches on Oat Bread, Spinach Salad, and Split Pea Soup. I am pretty sure I'll be the only one eating the soup. Hoping I'm wrong, but we will see. I absolutely LOVE pea soup .. even when I was a kid. My mom usually made it when it was just her and I for dinner. This was on her "soul food" lists of foods that her and I much enjoyed when I was growing up.  She always served her pea soup with red onions. Not sure why, but I had a thing for the 'purple onions' when I was kid - always thought they were 'cool'. So I'm keeping with the tradition. And I'm pretty sure her recipe pretty much goes like this:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup chopped sweet onions
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 cups medium-diced carrots (2 to 3 carrots)
• 1 lb of ham hock (or leftover ham bone)
• 1 pound dried split green peas
• 8 cups water or chicken stock
• salt & pepper to taste
• sliced or diced red onion for garnish

Directions:

In a 4-quart stockpot on medium heat, saute the onions until the onions are translucent, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the carrots, 1 pound of split peas, and water or chicken stock (I used 8 cups of water and 2 chicken boullion cubes). Add ham bone or ham hock. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. Skim off the foam while cooking. Remove ham hock (or ham bone) from the soup. Cut the ham off the bone and chop into bite size pieces. Add the chopped ham back to the soup and continue to simmer for another 40 minutes, or until all the peas are soft. I simmer until the peas turn very soft and almost a smooth consistency. Stir frequently to keep the solids from burning on the bottom. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve hot garnished with thinly sliced red onions.

 Enjoy!