Fourth of July Dinner: Oven-Roasted Ribs

In my younger days, I would have stood in the rain. In the thunder. In the lightning. I would stand there proudly in front of my grill, cooking whatever meat that deserved to be slaughtered and sold for my consumption.

I have aged. I have mellowed. I have…softened. There’s no way in hell you will catch me during a storm in front of a electrical conductor cast from steel and hooked to a tank of very combustible propane. You will likely not catch me in front of a grill as it rains either. I’m simply not willing to make the sacrifice of personal comfort (I write this from my 74-degree living room, lit only by the glow of my laptop and the television across the room). And it’s not about grilling. This statement applies to all facets of my life, except parenting. I sacrificed my personal comfort when The Wife announced she was pregnant (and before you scoff, I’m very happy to sacrifice said comfort). That is about as far as I am willing to go in that department.

While it never did storm on Independence Day, it threatened and the radar was menacing. The last thing I wanted to do was get caught in a storm while slow-roasting 4 lbs. of pork ribs, so I decided to scrap cooking over fire for the hot air of my oven. I do own a stovetop smoker, but I wanted to give oven-roasting a try from start to finish.

Thursday dinner: Roast chicken breasts with garbanzo beans

Not all paprika is created equal.

For most of my life, I thought paprika was the orange stuff that some people would put on macaroni salad. It really wasn’t until the last few years, when I really got into exploring and trying new stuff in the kitchen, that I learned the difference. It’s really a product of my upbringing. We never ate the stuff. Frankly, if it wasn’t parsley, basil or oregano, it rarely made it into one of my mother’s recipes. That said, it’s the fourth-most consumed spice in the world.

This particular recipe calls for smoked paprika. Most Spanish paprikas are smoked, though they can range in flavor from sweet to hot depending on the pepper used. Spanish paprikas are typical milder, a direct correlation to the pepper grown. The peppers used in Hungarian paprika are bolder and sun-dried. This process maintains the pepper’s natural flavors, which can range from bittersweet to hot. The most widely found variety, found in the plastic McCormick bottles with “Paprika” splashed across the front, is good mainly for garnish and color. It possess little to no flavor.