Corwins Bremen III Beef Ribs (or Vesper Vegetarian) over Yellow Rice

So this might or might not be up your alley, depending on pallet, but I like it because of it’s flavor and it’s simple to prepare. It might have looked better but I drowned my rice with the gravy, that’s just how I roll. If you want to go vegetarian, just skip the meat and add less water 😉

 

What you’ll need

1 large package of yellow rice
2 packages of beef short ribs (From Bremen III if you can get them)
1/2 cup of flour (give or take two tablespoons)
veggies (5 medium potatoes, 4 carrots, 4 celery, 4 tomatoes) and/or any other veggie you like.
2 tablespoons of salt
1 1/2 tablespoons of pepper
1 tablespoon of minced garlic
2 cups of water

Now that we have everything, grab a tomato and cut it into four pieces. I did lots of pictures for illustration and hopefully so no one loses a finger.

Now, I cheated and used a blender or food processor, but if you don’t have one available, you can make it work by cutting off the skin (carefully!).

Then getting a masher (or the bottom of a cup/bowl) and mashing the rest up.

You should end up with more or less about 3 or so cups of liquid, I used four tomatoes for mine and it netted me no more than 4 cups. My cooking sadly isn’t an exact science but I have ways to contend with that if you’re worried about it.

So because of the cook time, you want the pieces of veggies to be largish so they hold up in the pot without turning to complete mush. The carrots I did in six pieces.

Pretty much the same thing for the celery.

For the potato (and onions if you want) I cut mine a bit too small so I would recommend just cutting them in half and then making two cuts on the top (to half and then half again, pretty much like the tomatoes above except make the first cut on the center instead of the end). You can skin them if you dislike the skins, down here we don’t care so much about that. If you have red potatoes, go for it, I didn’t, my recipes generally call for whatever is around so don’t be scared to add black beans and corn or mushrooms. It’s your food so whatever you like can go in it.

I originally did this with half of the ribs and regretted it because the meat shrinks during cooking so while it looks like a lot starting out it’s not so much afterward. You could just skip the meat for a vegetarian version of this and it would still be amazing, though you would need less water (I’ll go over that in a bit). I picked up some beef short ribs (from bremen III, yes they have winn dixie supermarkets there, go cig!).

I cut between the bones evenly so there is the same amount of meat on either side of the bone, just a straight cut down, no problem. sharp knife helps with all this but watch your digits!

Then I got about a half a cup of flour (if you need to add more at some point during this process, no problem), added one tablespoon of salt and one tablespoon of pepper to it and battered the ribs on all sides.

I took 1/4 cup of oil in the bottom of a large pot (seen further below) and put it on medium high heat (that’s half way past half way or 3/4 on the off-high scale) cook them for 2-3 minutes on each side AFTER the oil is hot (if you don’t know how to tell, get ONE “SINGLE” DROP of water on your finger and let it fall into the bottom of the pot, if it sounds terrifying, it’s ready!)

Next get some tongs (or anything to keep your fingers out of the way, I burned one of mine pretty bad doing this) and use them to place the meat in the bottom and also for turning/removing the ribs. When they are all done, remove the pot from the heat for a few minutes (4?) to cool off just a bit.

If you add liquid while the oil is hot, it’ll spatter back up and give you something to remember why you don’t want to do that again in the future, so I let the pot cool before the next step, which is adding in all the veggies first, then pouring the tomato puree on top and adding water to about an inch below the level of everything when the meat is added back in. The amount of water can vary depending on how much veggies you use so this is no big deal, just don’t worry about it, the veggies and meat will shrink a little bit during cooking and it’ll also lose water from evaporation so like I said, this isn’t science, it’s cooking.

Add in the tablespoon of salt (or less if you’re concerned about sodium), tablespoon of garlic (why be stingy here), a half a tablespoon of pepper and two tablespoons of the flour you used for the ribs (if you ran out, just use two tablespoons of extra flour), I had self rising flour but again, the purpose is just to have a little batter on the ribs and something to thicken the sauce in the pot so no worries if you have regular flour.

Bring it all to a boil again and then reduce heat (medium low-medium temp) so it just simmers (small boil) for an hour and a half covered stirring it about every 20 minutes.

IF YOU DON’T STIR IT then whatever is on the bottom will burn (including the tomato puree because it’s heavier than the water) and you’ll ruin the dish so be warned. Also keep an eye on the water, if it looks like less than the picture below, you might want to add a half a cup or so of water to keep things the way they should be

Once the hour and a half is up, and everything is looking hydrated and a bit reduced, it’s time for the rice, I picked up a large bag of yellow rice and just followed the directions on the back of it, brands and cooking times may vary but roughly (check the bag for this) it says bring water to a boil, add the rice and spices, reduce heat and cook for 20-30 minutes covered, remove from heat, let stand 5 minutes.

Plate the rice, take a ladle and the rest on top, I prefer overkill with the gravy (which should be nice and thick) and it’s ready to serve. If you die from choking on a bone, I can’t help you. Enjoy! If you have questions, just ask 😉