Mom's Ribs

“What did Mom make for dinner every night when we were little,” I recently asked one of my sisters.

Our mother cooked dinner most days of the every week, except when she and our father would eat dinner out. On those occasions, my siblings and I would eat TV dinners, or canned ravioli, or perhaps Beanie Weenies, if my older sister got involved in the cooking. Don’t feel sorry for us. We considered those kinds of meals to be treats. At least I did.

But every other night she prepared a meal that included some kind of meat, some kind of starch (generally potatoes), and some kind of vegetable. She wasn’t big on fresh vegetables, so we generally ate canned peas, corn or beans. Again, don’t feel sorry for us. My mother was a fabulous cook, and we thought the canned vegetables were delicious.

But back to the question I posed to my sister.

“Fried chicken, breaded pork chops, pot roast, meat loaf, things like that,” my sister recalled.

Being so dedicated to providing my father and their four kids with a nutritious and delicious meal every night, I wonder if she ever struggled to think of what to cook for dinner the way that I do. Probably.

I thought most of the meals she made were delicious; some, probably not so much. For me, breaded pork chops – which were my father’s personal favorite – didn’t thrill me. I ate them, because my mother was not the sort who would become a short-order cook because one of her children didn’t care for a meal.

But I was surprised to learn, during this same conversation with my sister, that she wasn’t a fan of my mother’s roasted spareribs and saurkraut. “When I would come home from school and ask Mom what was for dinner, and she would tell me it was spareribs and saurkraut, I would be very disappointed,” admitted my sister.

Not me. That was one of my favorite meals. Except that at some point during my youth, Mom decided to start putting apples in the saurkraut. I never enjoyed it quite as much after that. I would try to pick out the apple, but since the meal was cooked in the oven, the softened apples pretty much became part of the saurkraut. Oh well.

Mom was not big on recipes, unfortunately. She wrote down a few of her specific dishes, such as her cole slaw dressing and her gazpacho. But as for her regular main dishes, not many recipes. Sometimes I try to recreate her meals from memory, but mostly I go on the Internet or look at my cookbooks and see what I can find.

That’s what I did recently when I developed an overwhelming desire for these baked spareribs. And I found my recipe in a somewhat surprising place – one of my Lidia Bastianich cookbooks!

I would link to her recipe on her website, but it’s not on her website, so I will simply tell you that the recipe comes from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, copyright 2002.

Spare Ribs Roasted with Vinegar and Red Pepper
6 servings
1 rack (about 3-1/2 pounds) pork spare ribs
Sea or kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled
4 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 cup (or as needed) canned chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
1 to 2 teaspoons crushed hot red pepper

Cut the rack of spare ribs between the bones into single ribs. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Pat the spare ribs dry and season them with salt and pepper. Toss them in a roasting pan into which they fit comfortably with the olive oil, garlic, and by leaves. Pour in the broth and roast, turning occasionally, until the liquid is almost completely evaporated and the ribs are golden brown, 45 minutes to an hour.

Meanwhile, stir the wine, vinegar, honey, and crushed red pepper together in a small bowl until the honey is dissolved.

Brush all sides of the ribs with some of the vinegar glaze, then pour the remaining glaze into the roasting pan. Continue baking, turning every few minutes, until the glaze is syrupy and the ribs are mahogany brown and sticky to the touch, about 30 minutes. Spoon off as much of the fat as you like before serving the ribs.

I used a rack of baby back ribs instead of pork ribs since they seem more manageable, and I was cooking only for my husband and me. It took the whole hour before the liquid came close to being evaporated. And I’m not sure my ribs were ever sticky to the touch, but they did turn a lovely golden brown.

I served the ribs with saurkraut (sans apples), mashed potatoes, and corn. I, of course, mixed all of these courses together on my plate and had one big delicious supper. The meat came off the bones easily, and the flavors went terrifically with the saurkraut.

Here’s to you, Mom!