Month: July 2020

BBQ Pork Ribs in the Instant Pot

Instant Pot BBQ Pork Ribs

Print Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 1 rack of ribs

Ingredients
  

  • 1 rack St. Louis style or spare pork ribs (membrane removed)
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 2 Tbsps chilli powder
  • 1 Tbsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp chipotle powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp hickory smoke powder (optional if hard to find)
  • 1 Tbsp cornstarch
  • 2 Tbsps sugar
  • 1 cup beer (alternatives: pineapple juice, cola or chicken broth)
  • 1.5 cups BBQ sauce

Instructions
 

  • Mix together all the herbs, spices with the salt, cornstarch and sugar. Rub this powder into the ribs. Set the rack into the Instant Pot, pour the beer into the bottom. Roll the ribs into a spiral and set onto the rack of the pot, bones vertical. Close and seal, cooking on "Meat" setting for 25 minutes. Remove and slather with BBQ sauce and either place on high temp grill or under a broiler for 3-5 minutes per side to caramelize. Serve with extra sauce.
Keyword BBQ, Grill, Meat, Pork, Ribs

And now for the details…

Okay, so this is another one of those recipes that almost seems too easy to share. The Instant Pot has changed my life when it comes to cooking ribs. Remember that previous method of boiling or baking the ribs for several hours to try and get them tender? NO MORE! The Instant Pot makes this SO EASY, and so fast, that ribs on a weekday are not only a possibility, but a preferred option because of how simple it makes your evening meal.

If you want to make these even faster, you can do what I do and mix up a large batch of the rub and store it in a Tupperware container, so you can even skip measuring out spices when it’s time to make these.

Speaking of the rub, that’s where we start out recipe. In a bowl (or Tupperware), mix together the garlic powder, chilli powder, cumin, oregano, chipotle powder, hickory smoke powder, salt, cornstarch and sugar. If you cannot find hickory smoke powder, just skip that part. I know it took me a long time to hunt it down, and I’ve been treating that stuff like it’s powdered gold. Again, you double, triple, quadruple, or more the amount of those measurements, and just have the rest sitting in a container for the next time you make the ribs.

Next, it’s time to get those ribs ready for cooking! Before you rub everything in, tear off the membrane, also known as the silver skin, on the back of the ribs. It’s not the end of world if you forget this step, but the ribs will have this membrane on them when you eat, and it’s a little chewy and ropy. There are plenty of videos and info out there showing you how to do this, I found this video has great info on how and why to remove the membrane (skip to 1:30 to see the technique ;P).

Next we’ll take that rub and… well… rub… it into the rack of ribs (if you’re storing extra, make sure to set that aside so that you don’t cross-contaminate the spare rub with those ribby fingies). Get right in there and massage the rub into the meat on both sides. To save on using extra dishes, I actually do this right on the packaging the ribs came in 😛

Next, it’s time to cook! Pour the beer into the bottom of the Instant Pot. If you’re not a fan or don’t want to cook with alcohol, you can replace the beer with juice (I recommend pineapple, but orange or apple would work too), broth, or even cola or root beer.

Next, curl the ribs into a spiral and place them so the bones are vertical in the pot. In my case, unfortunately the rack was cut in half in order to fit the packaging, so I just kinda half-circled them around the outside of the pot. I have tried doubling the recipe, and a spiralled double rack JUST fits into the pot. Cover the pot up and set the lid to “Sealed” position. We are going to pressure cook these on the “Meat” setting for 25 minutes.

Once you have that set, we wait. You basically have 25 minutes of your life back. So many options on what to do here. You could make some pretty impressive sides to go with those ribs. OR. You could kick up your heels and enjoy the rest of the can of beer, since there’s more that 1 cup in a can 😉

Once the ribs are done, unseal the lid and let the pressure come back down, then open up that lid and expose the gloriousness that is the cooked ribs. Lay them on a tray and slather them with your favourite BBQ sauce (both sides).

Now you have two options here: you can either finish these off on the grill or in the oven. On the grill, set your heat to medium-high, or in the oven, set your broiler to medium-hi. Either place the ribs right on the grill or under the broiler, and cook them for a few minutes on either side, just long enough to get some darkened, caramelized bits.

Remove from the heat, and either serve up directly with your extra BBQ sauce on the side, or slather on a bit more sauce just before serving.

Happy eating.

Breakfast Biscuit-Style Cinnamon Rolls with Raisins and Pecans

3 Comments

Biscuit-Style Cinnamon Rolls

Print Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Course Bread, Breakfast, Snack
Servings 12 buns

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups flour (all-purpose)
  • 2 Tbsps sugar
  • 4 tsps baking powder
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • 1/4 cup cold butter
  • 1/3 cup room-temperature butter
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp cinnamon
  • 1/3 cup raisins (optional)
  • 1/4 cup toasted pecan pieces (optional)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400ºF/205ºC Blend the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the 1/4 cup cold butter. Add the milk and stir until just combined. Let sit in fridge while making the filling. Mix together the 1/3 cup softened butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until formed into a paste. Take the dough out of the fridge, roll out on a floured surface to a rectangle approximately 12"/30cm by 18"/46cm. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin well. Place approximately 1/2-1 tsp of the filling into the base of each cup of the muffin tin. Spread the remaining filling over the rectangle of dough. If using, sprinkle raisins and pecans over the topping. Roll the dough from the long edge up, so you end up with a 18"/46cm roll. Cut the roll into 12. Place the rolls, with a cut side down, into the prepared muffin tin. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the buns are golden brown. Let cool 5 minutes, then remove from tin. Serve.
Keyword Baking, Biscuits, Buns, Cinnamon

And now for the details…

Howdy folks! Admittedly, this one is not my recipe. It’s a recipe I had gotten from my mom, and she has been making it since I was a kid. My parents were in to visit this past weekend and I asked her the origin of the recipe, since all I have is a recipe card I diligently copied years ago from hers when I moved away. Turns out, this is a recipe from Canadian Living magazine that my mom found years ago (it was when I was a kid, so I’m not going to talk about just how long ago… just… it’s been awhile.)

Do you have cinnamon bun fanatics in your home? These rolls are not quite the same as a cinnamon bun, since the leavening agent here is baking powder instead of yeast, and you won’t get that same fluffy texture. But to be honest, I prefer these rolls over yeast cinnamon buns any day. Yeast cinnamon buns remind a little bit of the texture of pancakes or French toast. Particularly the middle of the bun, where it’s kinda doughy and if it’s had time to sit in the moist filling, it almost gets a little soggy… no thank you, no thank you! Biscuit cinnamon rolls are still a little soft in the middle, but they’ve got this crispiness going on around the edges, and the filling caramelizes a bit since the rolls are cooked apart in separate baking tin cups. MmmmmmmmMMMMmmmmm…

So let’s get to cooking, shall we? First off? Preheat that oven to 400ºF/205ºC!

We start with the dough. Mix/sift together the dry ingredients for the dough (flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, kosher salt). You can use regular salt here, in fact, I think that’s what the original recipe calls for, but I liked the idea of using kosher salt so you would get occasional bites of the salty bits, giving the buns an almost salted caramel type flavour. Once the dry ingredients are mixed together, cut the cold butter (1/4 cup worth) in, using a pastry blender or knives. You can do all of this in a food processor too, which will make it even easier! Cut the butter in until its down to about pea-sized pieces. Next, we add the milk. Mix it in just until the dough has formed up. We don’t want to mix too long or the dough will get tough. Set the dough aside, maybe even sticking it into the fridge, while you get the filling ready.

To get the filling ready, we are going to smush together the softened butter (1/3 cup), brown sugar, and cinnamon. Get it mixed all nicely together so it’s a smooth paste. Before it makes its way into the cinnamon rolls, we’re going to prep the muffin tins by greasing them well (or not at all if you’re using silicone tins; man, I love this muffin tin!) and then dropping about 1/2-1 teaspoon of the filling into the bottom of each cup. This is going to give us that gooey, but crispy bottom for each roll.

Next step is to get those rolls ready! Flour the surface of your kitchen counter quite well so the dough does not stick. Roll out the dough so it becomes a rectangle about 12″/30cm by 18″/46cm. It does not need to be perfect, just an approximation of a rectangle of that size. The dough should be about 1/2″/1cm thick. I just used my fingers to pat and flatten out the dough, but you could also use a rolling pin if you’d like. As you flatten it out, lift each corner occasionally to make sure there is enough flour underneath that the dough will not end up sticking to the counter.

Once the dough is the right size/shape, smear the topping over the dough, trying to get close to the edges and corners. If you are using them, add the raisins and pecans by sprinkling them over the topping. I polled on the Instagram to see what the consensus was on raisins vs. none, and wow, I was not expecting so many folks to be anti-raisin! I was assuming 50/50, but it ended up being closer to 70% of folks who would prefer no raisins! Since I was making these primarily for my dad while he was visiting, the raisins stayed 😉

Next, we roll these up and get them ready for baking! Roll the dough from the long edge up, so that the roll ends up being about 18″/46cm long. If parts of it are sticking, pull them up lightly, and if there is a LOT of flour as you roll, dust it off onto the counter as you roll. Once rolled, let the seam come to the bottom, and then cut the roll into 12 pieces. I find the easiest way to get a somewhat consistent set of pieces is to cut the roll in half first, cut each of the halves in three, then cut each of those pieces in two.

Finally, place each of the pieces into cups of the muffin tins, with the cut sides facing down and up, and bake for 15-25 minutes, or until the rolls are a nice golden brown.

Once they are done, let them cool for about 5 minutes, then remove them from the tins while they are still warm. If you leave them too long, and they cool completely, the bottom, caramel-like middles will harden, and they will be very hard to remove from the tin.

Finally, serve!

Happy eating.

Magical Frangipane Tart with Raspberries and White Chocolate

1 Comment

Raspberry White Chocolate Frangipane Tart

Print Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Cooling Time 30 minutes
Total Time 2 hours
Course Dessert
Servings 1 tart (10″ round)

Ingredients
  

Crust

  • 2 cups flour (all-purpose)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 3/4 cups butter (cold)
  • 1 egg yolk

Frangipane

  • 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 cup almond flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 Tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp almond extract

Assembly

  • 30 g white chocolate (1 oz, cut in chunks)
  • 115 g fresh raspberries (4 oz)

Instructions
 

Crust

  • Using a pastry cutter or food processor, mix together the flour, sugar, salt and butter, until the butter is cut into very small pieces. Add the egg yolk and vanilla, and mix by hand until the pastry starts to form up. Place the dough into a 10" tart tin with a loose base, pressing into the tin until a crust has been formed, and poke holes with a toothpick or skewer. Place in the fridge for an hour. Place pie weights onto the crust, and bake at 375ºF/190ºC for 20 minutes, then remove the weights and bake again for 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool.

Frangipane

  • Cream butter and sugar together. Alternate adding parts of the almond flour with each egg. Mix in vanilla, almond extract and all-purpose flour.

Assembly

  • Pour frangipane into cooled crust. Arrange raspberries and white chocolate into the frangipane. Bake at 350ºF/175ºC for 45-50 minutes. Cool, then serve.
Keyword Almond, Butter, Frangipane, Raspberry, Tart

And now for the details…

Hello folks, sorry it has been awhile. What better way to make a comeback than with a delicious dessert whose scent of butter, sugar, and vanilla fills your house when baking. And then wafts its way to your nostrils while sitting on the counter, waiting to be eaten?

Although I have called this a Frangipane tart, what we are making here is probably more aptly called a Bakewell tart. There are plenty of other styles of Frangipane tarts that make use of a much different style of crust. The Bakewell uses a shortbread dough as the base. Typically, slivered almonds are used on top, and icing sugar is sprinkled over the entire tart. In our case, we are filling the tart with raspberries and white chocolate instead. The final product is like having a nice, thick piece of shortbread cookie with a creamy, slightly chewy filling on top, dotted with tart but sweet raspberries and little pieces of white chocolate.

Let’s get to making, shall we?

Although there are several steps to this tart, the good news is that each individual step is not so terribly long, and it’s really the waiting while baking that is the hardest part.

Let’s start with the crust. Unlike other baking endeavours, the joy of this crust is that I don’t need to wait for the butter to soften! Since I am apparently inept in thinking ahead, this is great for me, since I use the cold butter to make the crust, AND it’s a reminder to put out the half cup of butter to soften for making the frangipane later (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, take out that other butter now…)

You have a couple of options here. You can make the crust in a food processor, but because my food processor lives in our basement when not in use because of lack of kitchen space, I get super lazy and find alternatives to hauling it upstairs… in this case, I used a pastry cutter. If you have neither of these things, you can go old school and use knives, or even your fingers. Whatever you’re using, add the flour, sugar, salt and butter together first, and either give it a few zips with the food processor, or dig in with the pastry cutter, until the butter is cut into small-ish pieces, about pea-sized. For this particular recipe, I used kosher salt, and a decent amount of it. I did this on purpose, since I knew that between the raspberries, white chocolate, and frangipane, the overall tart was going to be very much on the sweet side, and the salty bites you are going to get with the kosher salt in the crust will provide a nice contrasting flavour, rather than just a whole lot of sweet.

Once the first four ingredients have been cut together, add the vanilla and egg yolk. For this, I got right in there with my hands. Mix them together until the pastry just starts to form up. It will still be pretty shaggy, but take the entire thing and pour it into your tart tin. In this case, we are going to use a 10″ tart tin, with a loose base. That loose base will allow us to easily remove the tart once it’s baked and leave that beautiful, fluted look to the crust. Not to mention that thanks to that fluted look, we get more surface area of the crust that bakes, resulting in those crunchy, buttery bites when eating the crust… Oh no… I’m drooling and we haven’t even gotten past the crust yet. This wait is going to be excruciating.

Anyhoo… now that the dough is in the tart tin, press it into a crust in the tin, including up against the sides. Try using both thumbs at the top corner of the tin, to get the edges pushed together. Was mine perfectly even at the end? Not even close. But… my end goal is taste, not looks, so I wasn’t too fussed. Poke holes into the bottom of the crust with either a toothpick or a skewer. This will help the base bake a bit more consistently, as well as help reduce the likelihood of it puffing up when we blind bake it.

Before we bake, place the crust in the refrigerator for about an hour. Then, preheat your oven to 375ºF/190ºC. Line the crust with aluminum foil, and place either some pie weights, or dried beans, to weigh it down so the crust does not puff up while baking. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, then remove it from the oven, take out the aluminum foil with the weights/beans, and put the crust back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes, or until the whole thing is golden brown.

Once it is baked, take out the crust and let it cool completely. You can even do this the day before, and let it sit until you are ready to make the rest of the tart.

Next is our frangipane. A friend of mine likened it to marzipan, and it does have some similarities. The base for both are ground almonds, and combine that with the sweetness and almond extract flavouring, and they are quite close. But frangipane is more of a pastry cream, made with almond flour, butter, eggs, and sugar, while marzipan is more of a candy, using almond flour, confectioner’s (icing) sugar and egg whites or corn syrup.

Before we make the frangipane, preheat the oven to 350ºF/175ºC. To get the frangipane started, cream together the butter (remember that butter that we remembered take out and soften at the beginning??) and sugar until light yellow and fluffy. I would recommend doing this in a stand mixer or with a handheld mixer. Next, mix in your eggs one at a time, alternating with adding in the almond flour approximately a third at a time. Finally, mix in the regular flour, vanilla and almond extract. Pour the frangipane into your tart shell, and then add the raspberries and white chocolate directly into the frangipane. I tried to make it at artful-ish as I could, hopefully you can appreciate the effort! The frangipane is fairly thick, so you may have to push the fruit into it to get it to set. If your white chocolate is poking out a little bit, that’s okay too. The frangipane will puff up and mostly cover it as it cooks.

Depending on how well browned you got your crust when you blind baked it, you might need to place foil around the edge to protect them to keep them from getting burned. Place the tart in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the frangipane has puffed and turned a golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Then pop it out of the tin from the bottom, cut and serve!

Happy eating.