Slow-Cooker Braised Elk Ribs

A guest had brought some pre-packed elk ribs so I made this for dinner yesterday (and of course forgot to take a picture, so you get a stock picture of what the uncooked ribs look like). I adapted the base recipe from Brown Hollow using ingredients I had which inspired me. Yeah, it’s pretty shameless the way I tinker with recipes and ignore instructions nowadays; my mom, who does the same but doesn’t own up to it, shakes her head.

I served this with a baby spinach salad topped with some of Edmund’s cranberry-orange relish and chopped pecans, and a side of basmati rice cooked with Edmund’s Moroccan preserved lemons.

• One slab of elk ribs (1.5 to 5 lbs or 0.7 to 2.2 kg)
• Montreal Steak Rub or just salt and pepper

Braising Liquid

• 8 ounces (250 mL) home-made cranberry-orange relish if you have it, or store-bought red currant jelly
• ¼ tsp (1 mL) ground mustard powder
• ¼ cup (60 mL) tawny port
• 4 cups (1 L) home-made chicken, turkey, pork, or beef stock (I used turkey)
• ½ tsp ground allspice or crushed allspice berries
• 1 tsp (5 mL) juniper berries (10 to 12), scorched and coarsely crushed (actually, I left them whole this time)
• 1 tsp ground cardamom or 4-5 pods, husks removed and finely crushed
• 1 Tbsp (15 mL) brown sugar
• ½ cup (125 mL) apple brandy
• 1 Tbsp (15 mL) red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp (5 mL) ground cinnamon
• Coarse salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1. In a slow-cooker set on High, whisk all braising liquid ingredients down to the cinnamon, being careful to liquefy the cranberry or currant jelly. Bring it to a simmer and let it cook for a while; this can take up to an hour if your liquids were cold. Alternately, heat and reduce in a pan on the stovetop before pouring in the slow-cooker if you want to hurry things up.
2. Meanwhile, pat the ribs dry with paper towels. Rub with the rub mix or just salt and pepper. Brown the ribs in a cast iron skillet.
3. Place ribs in slow-cooker, with the liquid level coming up over ribs and about three-fourths of the way up. If you need more liquid, add more broth or just water. Rinse the skillet you browned the ribs in with some of the braising liquid to get all those meat juices, and return the liquid to the slow-cooker.
4. Aromatic and root vegetables such as onion, potatoes, turnip, celery, and carrot may be added in an amount to loosely cover the meat. I added little red potatoes 2 hours later in the cooking so they would be just right by dinner time.
5. Simmer for at least 4 hours. The longer they simmer, the more tender the ribs get. Six to eight hours brings them to falling-off-the bone, which is the desired level of doneness.

Don’t add salt or pepper until serving time, as this makes a fairly spicy broth thanks to the mustard and the rub on the ribs. I saved the leftover liquid to cook a piece of beef later this week, rather than waste it.

This recipe should work well with any game ribs as well as beef short ribs. A dark port would work as well as the tawny port and result in a deeper-coloured liquid.

Slow-Cooker Day: Lemon Basil Chicken

Just set six big chicken breasts in the slow-cooker in an adaptation of the whole-chicken recipe Edmund used the other day.  I plan on using the extras from dinner for subsequent meals of chicken pasta and a Greek feta pie.  Here is how it goes:

Ingredients

• 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, washed and patted dry
• 1 large onion or 2 small ones, finely sliced
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) extra virgin olive oil
• Juice of 2 lemons and grated zest of one (I use Meyer lemons, they have a nice sweetness)
• 1/2 tsp (3 mL) Kosher salt
• 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) fresh parsley, chopped
• 1/2 tsp (3 mL) dried basil
• 1/3 tsp (2 mL) paprika

Preparation

1. Place the sliced onion in the bottom of the slow-cooker.
2. Mix the olive oil with the herbs and spices, and brush over the chicken breasts.  Place the chicken over the onion in the slow-cooker.
3. Sprinkle the parsley over the chicken, squeeze the lemon juice, and pour the rest of the mix of oil and herbs over everything.
4. Cover and cook on Low for 6-7 edit: 4 to 6 hours or on High for 2 to 3 hours.
5. Pull the chicken out and thicken the sauce on High with the juice of a third lemon and 3 to 4 Tbsp (45-60 mL) flour whisked in.  Serve with pasta, mashed potatoes, or rice.

Edit: Adjusted cooking times, added sauce instructions.

Edit #2: Leftovers were delicious with pasta, in soup and in feta pie.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

We recently replaced our slow-cooker; the old one served for a long and glorious career since the late 60s, having originally been used by Edmund’s mom, who was a cooking teacher, so there was no shame in its finally giving up the ghost.  I bet the new one will not last nearly as long (programmed obsolescence!) but it is larger and more powerful, and it has a timer.  Anyhow, Edmund inaugurated it with a very nice spaghetti sauce before Thanksgiving, and now it’s my turn.

I’d been itching to try this slow-cooker Texas pulled pork recipe from Allrecipes.com; I’d browsed several variants, and this was the one that most appealed to me.  However, I noticed a few caveats.  First, the big mystery ingredient: like most pulled pork recipes, it calls for a generous helping of barbecue sauce.  That seems a bit vague to me, given the huge difference from one sauce to the next.  I like to make my own condiments, and I was reluctant to default to commercial salt-and-corn-syrup-based sauce.

Second, I always like to check the reviews and notes from other cooks and I noted that several reviewers were unhappy with the abundant quantity of liquid produced and the level of sweetness, saltiness, spiciness, or acidity.  It seemed clear that I would have to adjust the taste to suit our preferences, and probably reduce the sauce for serving.