Me Cook? Oh, Please…

I don’t cook. I may be accused of being a kook sometimes, but I am not a cook. Well, let me rephrase. The extent of my cooking is limited to the crock pot because it’s hard to undercook or burn food in them. Not to sell myself short, I can also bake fish in the oven and boil water for ramen noodles. My mother was a very good cook but I never inherited her skill and talent. If I can help it, the food I cook would consist of only one ingredient, usually meat seasoned with garlic pepper, seasoning salt, or lemon pepper. The only time there is more than one ingredient is when I make soup. In that case, it would be meat with bagged vegetables. Sounds so much like what a bachelor would do, wouldn’t it?

 There was a sale on pork spare ribs a couple of days ago so I bought a pack and when I got home I saw that there were three racks in the package. I took one and froze the rest. I added seasoning salt and pepper then put the rack in the crock pot and fired it up to cook on low heat for twelve hours. In the past, I would have set it on high for four hours but the flavoring doesn’t absorb very well in that short a time, especially since I don’t marinate the meat. The last couple of times I cooked meat at low heat and longer, I noticed that the seasoning absorbed through the meat better.

 The last time I cooked a rack of ribs was about three years ago and it was beef. I stopped doing this after my cholesterol level went up because there was a lot of fat in the beef ribs. The pork ribs on the other hand appeared to have lesser fat and easier to separate from the meat. The plan was to add some barbecue sauce after the meat cooked because if you add it while cooking, the sauce thins out, just gets oily, and doesn’t stick to the meat. After cooking for about seven hours, the pork ribs appeared done and so that’s what I had for dinner. Upon sampling it first, it was tasty enough not to need any barbecue sauce. The lower heat, slower cooking technique, worked very well. The meat was tastier, very tender, and even browned on top (although not as brown as the picture above). I think it was done after six hours so that’s probably what I’ll do next time. I finished half a rack during Wednesday’s dinner and the other half on Thursday. I don’t intend to eat that much meat in so short a time because I’m concerned that it will raise my cholesterol again, but at least I discovered a way to make the food I cook taste a little better.

So goes my successful but boring cooking story. If you are still reading at this point, I thank you graciously J.

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