On Mother’s Day, mothers should not be cooking. That said, what if the rest of the crew doesn’t really cook and NO ONE wants to go out?
Mom then steps in and rolls up the virtual sleeves and does what she does. I knew I would cook so I made this an easy meal! Fire up the BBQ and start smoking. This can be done at almost any time of the week! You don’t need to have a BBQ grill or a smoker to do this. You just need the seasonings I have listed below and an oven.
Disclosure: I was able to test drive all these products from Urban Accents as well as Busha Browne. (The disclosure is in other posts from Thanksgiving through today for each brand. I am just covering everything again. ) There is another brand- Cookina– who sent me an Oven Guard as well as a Baking Mat to protect my oven. I will be investing in one for the BBQ soon because we need it!
If you go looking for them at Whole Foods or at Gelsons, you should find it in the FOIL section or the gourmet section. The trick is to look and ask someone on staff. These mats are a really welcome help!
I had 3.5 pounds of baby back ribs defrosted and had them cut up into thirds to accessorize them with Urban Accents Dry Glazes and also to test Drive Busha Browne’s Jerk Rub! The Jerk Rub is not a dry rub– it’s a paste! It smells heavenly, looks like green mustard with seasoning in it and it’s kind of gooey a bit. A little goes a- L O N G- way!
I had an inkling things would shake out this way so I was fully prepared — right down to the misguided attempt to sub in a frozen key lime pie (never again!). I had my spices, my veggies (some from our garden that was showing us that we didn’t need to have a ton of plants– just the right ones– to give us the veggies we liked to eat!) I added in some mushrooms as well as corn on the cob to be prepared separately. I figured it would be ok to have lots of leftovers which would reduce my cooking time this week. (The story of this coming week has yet to be told and it’s going to boomerang right into the next week. Hope to heaven I survive it!)
I wanted to use a dry rub/glaze of spices from Urban Accent’s Dryglazes $4.50 (perfect for creating carmelizing glazes):
Here are the 2 I had my eyeballs on:
The Santa Fe BBQ Dry Glaze is to die for and I love it. I guess I loved it a little too much since I had failed to restock and I had very little left. The highlight was honey and chipotle seasonings since it’s a mix of sweet and hot. Love that!
As it turned out, because of my miscalculation, I had to dip into another spicey blend: The Cayman Citrus Heat Dry Glaze with chili, lime and jalapeno.
It’s a lot hotter than I had anticipated and I found that out after I had everything cooked!
Also that 3rd rack of ribs that had been cut was used to test drive Busha Browne’s Jerk Rub. I had previously covered this brand on this blog but I had not used anything but the Honey Jerk BBQ Sauce— which is oh-so-yummy!
Since I was doing harvest picking in my vegetable garden every couple of days, I saved several of the various squashes to create a medley of colors and textures for today!
Veggie Roasters . I have written about these products for at least 3 years and they are awesome. I found them when I was back east visiting a friend and I found them at an outlet mall cooking store. I bought a couple and thought (since I had just learned how to cook brussel sprouts) that it would be a great way to improve the flavor quotient. Since then, the cooking gods have smiled on me and introduced me to the PR for the brand who sent me several to try out. Talk about taking veggies up a level or two in terms of flavor as well as being able to use these seasonings on a variety of veggies from potatoes to brussel sprouts, it’s certainly easy enough to use. It only requires oil and the spices and a zip lock plastic bag.
The flavor for today was supposed to be Manchego and Garlic but I wound up with Dijon Pepper Vinaigrette
Corn on the Cob Shakers $4.99 (spicing up grilled corn on cob) There are two flavors: one with chipotle and parmesan and the other with chile and lime.
This is the flavor I wanted!
While I had the ribs in separate bags marinating, ditto with the veggies, I had most of dinner prepared. I totally forgot about the rest of my menu as I subtracted 2 slices from a frozen key lime pie and put it back into the freezer. Knowing now what I didn’t know then was that I wouldn’t like the flavor (not tart enough) and the whipped cream on it wasn’t whipped cream but some frozen topping. Like I said, never again. I can’t wait to dump that pie in to the trash!
When everything hit the grill, the BBQ had been getting hot with charcoal and oak along with prepping the grill for ribs. I made up a dry red wine indirect bath of liquid for it to keep the ribs moist. I also made up a basting sauce with Busha Browne’s Honey Jerk BBQ Sauce along with dry red wine and a few nice additives. It was still 85% Busha Browne’s Sauce
This is my photo of my prep area:
The bottom right photo is the Busha Browne’s Collection. Bottom left are the veggies in foil along with the ribs on the grill.
It smelled sooooooooooooo good when it came off the grill. The table was already set. Beers and water were put on the table and we sat down to eat. Of course the local vegetarian in the family had cheese pizza!
The ribs are in the top photo; the grilled avocado (recipe courtesy of my friend Gina Gomez!) The left bottom photo: veggies from the grill!
Here’s what dinner on the plate looked like. I tend to be a person who ” cooks for a crowd” and not just for one, two or three people (unless it’s crab, lobster or salmon). I wanted extra food, I have tons of extra food since it was so good, so tasty and more than a little spicy, that we each had about 3-4 ribs. I finished my generous helping of vegetables and ate my 1/2 grilled avocado– finishing it off by scooping it onto 1/2 a toasted English Muffin. (No photos of that part, but hey, that’s life!)
I highly recommend the spices, seasoning products listed here. I have so many Urban Accent Veggie seasonings because I keep replacing them. They also have brining kits too: YUMMY! I haven’t used them yet because it takes 24 hours to brine chicken or pork for this. It sounds fabulous though.
Check out the Brining Kits on Urban Accents HERE.
I would like to thank Busha Browne for the seasonings and sauces as well as Urban Accents for the extensive array of spices and seasonings. These tools (and they are tools) make cooking fun!
Disclosure: Yes I received Busha Browne’s product samples as well as Urban Accents product samples. I would tell you if they didn’t work but I wouldn’t be buying replacements if the products weren’t fantastic. They actually have to be really good for me to buy them. These two lines are definitely worth the money! The Cookina Baking/Cooking and Grill mats are also worth purchasing to decrease clean-up and particularly food loss on the BBQ.
Got questions? Post them here on the blog or hit me up on twitter.com/lastory or facebook.com/la-storyblog and post questions for me there!
Bon Appetit!
Stevie Wilson,
LA-Story.com
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