Glazed Pork Spare Ribs with Shichimi Togarashi

After spaghetti with dried chile and garlic last week, we have another Bon Appétit recipe (here) all up in this blog. I always find it odd that I'll go months without making anything out of the food magazines I subscribe to and then... just when I start wondering why I'm paying for them... I'll go on a tear like this and be all "Bon Appétit has so many great recipes!" Seems verrrry suspicious, but I suppose it is unlikely their editorial offices have developed mind reading technology.

The recipe calls for St. Louis style pork ribs... which are spareribs with the tips cut off so you end up with ribs of (relatively) uniform length with no awkward cartilaginous areas at the end. The confusion I had is that I thought "St. Louis style pork ribs" and "pork spare ribs" were the same thing... that's what happens when you don't grow up in a barbecue area... so when I saw that the recipe called for 2 racks that totaled 4 pounds I was stumped (since one rack of spare ribs weighs about 4 pounds by itself). I later learned that butchering them down to St. Louis style by cutting off the ends accounts for the difference. You end up wasting (or finding some other use for I guess) some tasty meat at those ends, but I guess it makes them easier to eat.

So what did I do? Well I was just feeding myself, and since I didn't know about the trimming, two full racks of spare ribs was just way too much. Thus I just cut a 4lb rack of spare ribs in half so I had something to stack to make the little rib rack pocket described in the recipe. Worked fine for me... probably enough to feed two people, or in my case produced enough meaty ribs to gnaw on for a few days.



I cooked the ribs in the oven on Sunday, but then put the rendered liquid and ribs in the fridge to finish a few days later. This way I was able to make the glaze and brown the ribs under the broiler in like 10-15 minutes for a quick weeknight dinner.

Anyway... I liked it. Thought it was pretty easy and tasty, and I liked that you can do it in stages. Star of the show? The shichimi togarashi, which I've had sprinkled over ramen at our local ramen stall, but never had as a part of my spice rack. Has a nice kick with some citrus notes... like it a lot. You can read more about it here.