Day 275: Ribs, Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans
OK, here’s the thing. I was at the grocery store looking at pork tenderloin and noticed a full rack of pork ribs at eye level labeled with the low low price of $5. It must have been mislabeled, I thought. Jackpot! I pictured myself exiting the store in the style of that IKEA ad that I just realized is probably on YouTube. It is.
(This makes me laugh every time I see it.)
But then the one underneath it was $4.65, and so was the next. I don’t know what kind of crazy side rib sale they were having (the back ribs were three times as much), but they were all in the vicinity of $5. So I couldn’t really not buy two. The thing is, I really really love ribs. But I don’t think I’ve ever eaten them so many times in the space of a year. I had intentions of saving them for our birthdays (coming up this month!), but I’m trying to clear out my freezer, not fill it. One of the racks got ejected to make room for a cheesecake (for an event tomorrow night) and so I took two minutes and threw it on a baking sheet, covered it with foil, slid it in the oven, turned it on to 300 degrees and went out. (Don’t worry, Mike was home.) The key to ribs that don’t pull your teeth out is precooking; I find roasting easier and less messy than boiling, but you could do that too. After that all you do is paint on some sauce and throw them on the grill just to finish them off (and heat them through, if the precooking was done in advance), and in this case I slid a few small, long sweet potatoes, poked with a fork, onto a rack beside them. The green beans went into a pot with about an inch of simmering water for about 5 minutes. Really, this dinner took about 5 minutes of actual work. For real.
(I should also mention in my defense that the plate in the above photo isn’t the traditional dinner-size, but halfway between dinner plates and dessert plates. Lunch plates? To put things into perspective, portion-wise. Which isn’t to say a few ribs didn’t disappear before they made it to the dinner table.)
A bargain! Excellent. It’s great to be in the right place at the right time.
I’m not a rib eater but the boys in my family, (2 university aged, an 11 year old and my husband), love them. My secret to tender ribs is to put them in an 11 by 17 pan, add 1 cup of water, cover the pan with foil and steam them at 350 degrees for an hour. As for the IKEA ad, my 11 year old jumped in the car after we stopped at a gas station the other day and yelled, “Start the car! Start the car!” Clearly, this ad is transgenerational. I’m heading to the store today, hopefully the sale prices remain steady.
Your are hillarious….I love reading you!
Manon from Ontario
Mmmm. I love ribs. And I love ribs on sale.
Julie, once again I am jealous of your photography and your ability to find a good bargain!
Question though – a few blogs ago, you showed a sweet potato roasted which you had made just pop out of its skin when cooked (I think it was an orange-fleshed one) – how did you do this? Mine neeeever do that!
Yum, which store? Can you say for us Calgarians? Also, what key words did you type in for the Ikea ad, it’s not opening on your page for me. (Had an Ikea moment myself when I took home 16 GORM shelves and went to Costco in my Mini…like that yellow car trying to get up the hill…)
The little blonde lady in that IKEA commercial looks just like my Food Studies teacher in high school. So cute!!
The ribs were from Safeway. The one in Mission, to be exact.
UG – I don’t know what I did, besides roast it! My sweet potatoes (the orangier ones, often labeled yams) usually sort of come apart from their skins. Have you roasted yours long enough?
Maybe I need to cook them a little longer. I’m pretty certain I’ll be eating one (or more) this weekend. I’ll give it a go! Usually I roast them chopped into small pieces but I want to try and make a baked one slide out of its skin now just to see if I can do it!
we love sweet potatoes/yams they are so sweet