Hey, Foodies! Happy Friday!
Recently, Natalia over at Traveling Hummingbirds wrote a post about a plate of delicious ribs she had while in Amsterdam. Being from the south, and married to a rib connoisseur, AND having mastered the art of making fall off the bone, fork tender, melt in your mouth ribs myself (I shared the recipe here way back in 2013), I had to know more, and she told me they were corned and smoked. Corned? Ribs?
I’d heard of corned beef, but this was new, and when I tried to find a recipe online, there was very little info about it. Naturally, I was intrigued. And I couldn’t help but feel challenged. So, even though I was positive I was going to ruin a perfectly good rack of ribs winging a corned rib recipe, I gave it a try anyways – and was delighted to discover I was wrong!
I’m not going to lie – there were MANY moments during this process that I thought we’d be ordering takeout at the eleventh hour. I didn’t even take pictures to document the preparation. The ribs weren’t very pretty. And unlike when I usually cook ribs, the smell didn’t make my mouth water. But the meat was succulent and delicious, which is all that matters!
Because most of the information I could find about brining to make corned meat was for briskets, and ribs are much thinner, I only brined the ribs for 48 hours.
Ingredients:
1 rack of pork ribs
salt for brining (I used Morton’s coarse grain salt)
plastic Ziploc bags
water
Preparation:
Cut the slab of ribs into 2-4 pieces (I made 3). Place each piece in a separate plastic bag. (Tip: Flip the ends of the bag over to the outside to prevent spreading raw meat germs.)
Mix your brining solution. I used about 1/8 cup salt for every 2 cups of water.
Place enough brining solution in each bag to submerge the meat and seal tightly.
Put your Ziploc bags inside another plastic bag (like a grocery bag) to guard against disaster and refrigerate.
Allow the meat to soak for 48 hours.
Rinse ribs under cold water, then place in a large pot, bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 hours.
And that’s it! We ate the entire rack that night, which we’ve never done before! If you try it, please let me know if you like it!
Check back next week for another Foodie Flavor!
Shannon Hollinger 
Hi Shannon! I’m glad that your ribs were tasty. I cooked ribs only once. I remember exactly that the ribs we had at Cafe de Klos were smoked, but there was nothing in the menu about the ribs being corned. I assumed that it was corned because the meat had a reddish color and it was salty. Maybe I was wrong and they just marinated it or it was an effect of smoking. I’m glad that you did not ruin them. Sorry if I misled you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Natalia – no worries! I think you must have been right because these turned out amazing! I’m always up for a little experimentation, and got so excited over this triumph that I’m planning to corn some other meats soon!
LikeLiked by 1 person