I bought some close dated St. Louis style BBQ ribs (reduced price!) and I’m trying to figure out what to do with them. I ate a quarter rack, but now I’m thinking about pulling off the meat and making a healthier dish with them. My first thought is saute up some veggies (summer squash, mushrooms, bell peppers), add spaghetti, maybe add marinara sauce, and then have about a quarter rack per serving in that. Any other ideas?
Four ideas:
1. Fake cartman’s rice: add a bit of veg oil to a pot. Add diced vegs of your choice. Let them soften together. Add the leftover pulled ribs, and leftover rice. The original recipe (arroz de carreteiro) asks for jerky instead but IMO it works even better with leftover beef ribs.
2. Croquettes: shredded meat, flour, one egg, baking powder, enough milk to make it a runny batter. Drop dollops of the batter into oil to deep-fry them. Not exactly healthy, but it tastes great.
3. Frittata: whisk together a half dozen eggs at room temperature, season them with salt and pepper; add shredded meat and diced vegs of your choice. (Avoid high moisture ones like tomatoes; and if using spinach, wilt it first.). Put it in a greased pan with a lid, and cook it on minimum fire. Flip it halfway, with the help of a plate. Works better if you use a large pan, with a flat bottom, and you have a homogeneous heat source.
4. “Hack potatoes”*: peel and dice some waxy potatoes. Add them to a lightly buttered pot. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Cook/fry/sear them on low fire, dripping a bit of water to form steam, stirring them well and scrapping the bottom of the pot as necessary. (Their shape gets a bit funny, but that’s OK). Add diced onions, bell peppers, and leftover shredded ribs midway. This works nicely if you sub the potatoes with already boiled yucca, too.
*that is not an actual name. I don’t have an actual name for this, it’s just something that I’d do in my uni times. It’s loosely based on Venetian potatoes.
I ultimately went for something along the lines of fried rice. I added broccoli, carrots, onions, and carrots that we had sitting around. Each veggie was cooked in an air fryer because we currently don’t have a vent over our range. I cooked up some brown rice in an Instant Pot. The last step was combining the rice, cooked veggies, rib meat, and some extra BBQ sauce.
