Texas Red-Braised Beef Short Ribs
I’ve had “The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook” since it came out, but I didn’t start trying the recipes until a few months ago. Mom gave it to me for Christmas with a stack of other cookbooks, courtesy of Half.com, God’s gift to me. I’m sure the other books specialized in baking, and this was the Wild Card.
I will never, ever, ever hear the end of this, but … Mom was right. I love this book. I’m seriously thinking about cooking through the entire thing next year, whether I blog about it or not, just because I take something away from every recipe: a memorable story in its introduction, the recipe’s history, a new term, some trivia, drink recommendations, variations.
This week, we tried the Texas Red-Braised Beef Short Ribs, “red” being Texan slang for chili con carne. Don’t be thrown by the inclusion of ancho and pasilla chiles in the braising liquid/sauce. Ancho chiles are dried poblanos. Pasilla chiles are dried chilacas. If your grocery doesn’t carry them, the important thing to know is that they are extremely mild chiles. According to the Scoville scale, which measures the hotness of a pepper, ancho and pasilla chiles have 1,000-1,500 Scoville heat units. Habaneros have 50,000-150,000. So, any mild chiles will work.
We love really spicy food, so I substituted the mild chiles for a few chipotles in adobo sauce. The result was a very delicious, verrrrry spicy sauce for the short ribs, which fell off their bones as soon as they came out of the oven. We cut the heat a little by spooning the ribs and sauce over some leftover mashed potatoes, but the Lee brothers suggest serving them with cornbread, rice or grits and red wine. You’ve got to love these guys.
Do you have a cookbook you “discovered” years after you got it? I’m sure Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours” fits that bill for a few hundred people, including me. Any others?
