The Great American Slow Cooker Book (48 page)

Serve It Up!
You’ll need cooked pasta—pappardelle, spinach fettuccini, or perhaps a shape like farfalle or ziti. And add lots of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

1
Mix the onion, vinegar, ginger, coriander, cumin, mustard, salt, cardamom, cayenne, and cloves in the slow cooker. Add the ribs; toss repeatedly to coat thoroughly.

2
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat for a few minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring often, until the garlic blisters and even browns a bit at its edges. Spoon the contents of the skillet over everything in the slow cooker. Drizzle the wine on top.

3
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the pork is aromatic, sweet, and ridiculously tender. Transfer the pork ribs to a serving platter or plates; skim any fat off the sauce in the cooker and serve it on the side.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Blistering the garlic takes it beyond the sweet, adding bitter notes. These will mellow in the cooker but still provide a bit of sophistication in a very aromatic dish.

•
Although this dish freezes fairly well, the texture of the pork is uncompromised after the thaw but the spices will dull a bit. Stir lemon juice or white wine vinegar into portions before reheating to brighten the flavors.

Serve It Up!
Can’t get enough garlic? Fry slivered garlic and cumin seeds in peanut oil in a skillet over medium heat until the garlic browns and the cumin seeds start to pop, stirring often. Spoon this over the top of the stew.

1
Combine the ribs, ale, rosemary, lemon zest, and garlic in a big bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 12 hours or up to 16 hours, tossing occasionally so the ribs swap places in the marinade.

2
Pour everything from the bowl into the slow cooker; let stand uncovered at room temperature for 20 minutes.

3
Stir in the carrots, parsnips, salt, and pepper.

4
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the pork is fork-tender, particularly at the bone. Use tongs or a large slotted spoon to transfer the ribs and vegetables to a serving platter or plates. Defat the sauce by skimming it with a spoon; drizzle it over the ribs and vegetables.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
If you have a slow cooker with a removable insert, marinate the ribs in the ale and aromatics overnight, covered, in the fridge. Since the container itself will be chilly, let it all stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before proceeding with the recipe. You may also have to add up to 1 hour to the cooking time, depending on how quickly your appliance takes the chill off everything.

•
If you find rosemary too assertive in this dish, try minced marjoram leaves.

•
Use a red ale, not a red cola! The best red ales come from Ireland or Belgium, although a few U.S. producers have gotten into the game. They add a pleasing, herbaceous bitterness to a very smooth, moderately sweet finish.

1
Mix the brown sugar, paprika, mustard, ginger, and salt in a small bowl; rub the mixture onto the ribs. Set them in the slow cooker, stacking them with a little airspace between
the ribs, standing them on their sides or overlapping as necessary.

2
Add the onion and cinnamon stick to the cooker, placing them on and around the ribs.

3
Whisk the rum, tomato paste, honey, and vinegar in a small bowl; pour over the ribs.

4
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the ribs are very tender and can be pulled apart at the base of each section.

5
Move the ribs to a serving platter. Discard the cinnamon stick. Defat the sauce in the cooker by skimming it with a spoon, then pour the sauce into a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often. Boil until reduced by half, continuing to stir with even a little more urgency, then drizzle some of the sauce on the ribs and pass the rest on the side for the dippers in the crowd.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
This sticky, sweet barbecue sauce is a great match for pork ribs. Best of all, you don’t have to make the sauce stovetop; it melds into a sauce right in the cooker.

•
We cut the ribs into sections so they’ll fit into any shape cooker. Although it’s easy to separate the racks into individual ribs once the connective tissue has melted, it can be tough work separating them while they’re still raw. It you want to simplify the job, have the supermarket’s butcher do it for you—although you’ll have to know the approximate dimensions of your cooker so you can tell him just how many ribs to leave connected in each section.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Baby back ribs—also called
loin ribs
or
Canadian back ribs
—are the ribs right off the backbone, above the spare ribs but often taken from smaller hogs. They have become the quintessential rib rack in the United States. Baby back ribs offer sweet, fatty bits of meat between the rib bones, perfect for gnawing. So take your time! Some wet paper towels will come in handy at the table.

1
Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Put the apricots in a small bowl; cover with boiling water. Set aside for 30 minutes.

2
Drain the apricots in a fine-mesh sieve or small-holed colander set in the sink. Set them in a small bowl; add the brown sugar, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Use a spoon to mash the ingredients into a paste.

3
Place the ham cut side down—or any way that will fit—in the slow cooker. Smear the exposed meat with the apricot paste.

4
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours in a medium cooker or 10 hours in a large cooker, or until the tender meat has pulled away from the bone but still holds its shape when sliced. If you make a slice into the ham in the cooker, you’ll be able to tell its consistency.

5
Transfer the ham to a carving board; let stand for 10 minutes before slicing.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
This tangy paste is made even better if you use bright orange California apricots, which are more sour than the pale Turkish ones.

•
Don’t have any dried apricots on hand? Use chopped pitted prunes or stemmed dried figs for a sweeter glaze. Or try pitted dates (but soak them in the hot water for only 10 minutes).

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
A ham is the hindquarter of the pig. A whole ham is actually the hip joint, part of the buttocks, and a part of the thigh. It’s almost never sold in this gargantuan state but is instead sliced in half, creating the butt and shank ends. The former, higher up on the hog, has a complex structure of bones and more fat; the latter, the traditional version shown in Norman Rockwell paintings, has a single bone running through its center and tapers to one end.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
Slow cookers and hams are not necessarily a match made in heaven—because of fit, not technique. To make sure you can complete a ham recipe, measure the depth and width of your model before you head to the supermarket. Take the tape measure with you and measure the hams in the case. You may find a slightly smaller ham will fit—or even a slightly larger one. Adjust the cooking time proportionally.

Serve It Up!
To carve a shank-end ham, make thin slices around the thigh bone, starting at the large end of the roast and cutting into the meat perpendicular to that bone. Of course, you’ll never get a whole slice off. Rather, slice a few thin pieces from one side, then turn the ham over and slice a few more from another spot, all the time working your way around that bone. Occasionally, run your knife along the surface plane of the bone to loosen more meat from it as you carve.

When you carve a butt-end ham, you’ll end up with some slices, but also with chunks and ends. Look for the larger sections of meat and slice down, creating thin slices, some of which may fall apart because of the way the muscles are shaped. If you find your cuts are falling into too many pieces at any point, hack off a whole quadrant and slice it into thin pieces and irregular chunks on the carving board.