Robert Irvine's Plastic Wrapped Baby Back Ribs.

We just had to try to do Robert Irvine's Plastic Wrapped Baby Back Ribs after seeing the TV show.

Put plastic wrapped baby back ribs in the oven? What? Are you nuts?

Vic Biorseth, Sunday, September 8, 2013
https://www.catholicamericanthinker.com

For the most part, TV today is just crap. There's just not that much on that we can tolerate for very long. Even the best of current comedy shows are steeped in Modernist heresy, Scientism, Marxist-Leftist political agenda advancement and general anti-Christian and anti-American sentiment. We have really started to like the Tennis channel, and we have never even played tennis. That ought to tell you something.

EWTN has a lot of good stuff, but it lost it's fire, and its major pull for us, with the retirement of Mother Angelica. We miss her zealous defense of the true faith, taken to the level of challenging American Bishops. Now, nobody is doing that on TV at all. Catholic TV is now pretty Catholic, but, it is "Nice" Catholic. We don't belong to the Church of Nice. On the secular side of the street, we appreciate Glenn Beck's programming on Dish channel 212, with something finally challenging the mainstream media's absolute anti-Christian, anti-American lock on political news and commentary. There, on channel 212, we finally see some fire and some zeal, and some attempt to change things for the better.

Reality TV? Forget it. Screaming brides having temper tantrums is not for us. Life and the goings-on among the all the rich filthy pigs in the world of highfalutin celebrity-hood is not our cup of tea. There's not really that much that we can watch for very long without getting disgusted.

Gospel music, and country music in general. The horse channel; the outdoor channel; various hunting and fishing shows. Car shows, NASCAR, NHRA and hot rod shows. The home and garden channel, and the cooking channel have become default mainstays. Of them all the cooking shows are the most useful to us, because that's something we not only can do, but we have no choice. If we don't cook, we don't eat.

If I had to guess what heaven might smell like, I would guess that heaven smells like my Marcie's kitchen when she's cooking dinner. Spending more time watching the cooking channel gives us ideas to try, and we adopt many of them into our collection of "old standby" recipes. Besides all the great stuff Marcie already does, we have adopted such newer favorites, in our house, as Paula Dean's turkey-burgers, Rachel Ray's chunky tomato soup, and the Pioneer Woman's tangy brisket of beef; all wonderful dishes that taste as good as they smell.

We especially like the Pioneer Woman these days, not only because of the great dishes and recipes, but because of the wonderful little snapshots of their family life, living on a working ranch. It just seems to us that that's how an American family ought to live.

It makes me think of Glenn beck, a city boy, and his attempt to get into that kind of life in Texas. He talks about it on his radio show, and it is extremely entertaining to hear about his attempts to get back to nature and disconnect from the grid and the electronic network of America. On some part of his new property in Texas, he built some sort of stand-alone, off the grid, old time cabin of self-sufficiency.

The funny part (maybe not so funny for the money and time spent) about it was that none of the alternative power sources worked. The solar panels didn't produce as advertised (and the sun dosen't shine at night,) the batteries didn't perform as advertised, the wind turbines didn't generate as advertised (and the wind doesn't always blow,) etc., etc., etc. None of the alternative energy stuff works yet; it's just not ready for prime time.

So, he had to go back to kerosene and candles for light, and diesel (or whatever) generators, and wood chopping and burning, and so forth. Also, his riding and herding learning explanations were pretty funny. He had trouble mowing straight lines with his tractor, and couldn't understand why all the other tractor drivers around plowed and mowed and harvested, etc., in perfectly straight rows, while his were always crooked and cock-eyed.

The upshoot of all of that experience was that, he would be better off to pay an experienced tractor driver to tend his fields for him.

Maybe that's all kind of far off track, from something about cooking, but it was interesting, and so I thought I'd tell you about it. In all likelihood, the Pioneer Woman's youngest children could probably do a better job of riding, roping, herding, driving tractors and everything else that needs to be done on any farm or ranch than Glenn Beck. And that's no slam on Glenn Beck; I think it's wonderful what all he's doing. But it's a strong statement of fact that the best farmers and ranchers and cowboys grow up doing it. You just don't learn all that stuff from any book or from any college course of training. I'm a city boy, too, and I couldn't do all that stuff either.

But I love watching other people do it well. That's why we love to visit Amish country now and then.

Anyway, the cooking channel has taken over a major portion of our "entertainment" TV. The only part we don't care for are all the various kinds of cooking contests, competitions and challenges. We just like the, simple pure cooking shows. Robert Irvine's Restaurant Impossible is an unusual favorite, especially the parts where he shows the cooking staff new dishes. He (and all good chefs) does this stuff so fast, and so easy. If we see something we want to try, we have to go look it up on the computer and get the recipe.

The one that made us sit straight up and take notice was when he showed some restaurateurs how to wrap baby-back ribs in cellophane plastic wrap, and put them in the oven, rather than on the grill.

Wow. I mean, double wow.

He removed the hard, tough membrane-skin from the inside of the rack of ribs - not an easy task, for us - and then applied a dry rub to both sides. (You can find the recipe on the cooking channel website.) Then, he tightly wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the oven at 250 degrees for two hours. (The key is the low temperature.) If you put plastic wrap on a hot burner, of course, it will melt and burn away. But if you wrap meat in it, and put it in a lower temperature oven, for a limited time, it does not melt.

After two hours, he took it out and let it stand for about ten minutes. Then, he cut the cellophane off with shears and put the ribs, meat side up, in either an oven on broil (about 550 degrees) or in one of those fancy "salamander" cookers with the burners above the meat, for just 3 or 4 minutes, just to brown the meat.

We did it; it works; it's wonderful; the meat just falls off the bone. It is exceptionally tasty, and it fills the whole house with a wonderful aroma of good cooking. And it's a whole lot less messy than slopping up a barbecue grill outside. When you open up the cellophane, the steam and juice that comes out just smells fantastic, and the meat is as tender as it could ever be expected to get.

We did two racks at a time, each divided in two to make them fit the cellophane better, and put them on two cookie sheets to put them in and out of the oven.

This has become one of our "old stand by" recipies; from now on, this is how we will do ribs at our house. If you're concerned about all the scientistic theories about plastic dooming the planet, and carcinogens being released by heat into the meat we eat, well, if we get cancer from this, I'll do another webpage to warn you about it just before we die.

In the meantime, I've got a good idea of what Heaven smells like.

It's well seasoned baby back ribs coming out of Marcie's oven.

(Read the Original Article at Plastic Wrapped Baby Back Ribs.)

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