easy pork rib football dinner

Tonight's speedy dinner started this morning with about eight pounds of country-style pork ribs in the slow cooker. Two bucks a pound at Costco and good for several meals. I never really cook these the same way twice, but these were done on the high setting for about seven or eight hours in a couple of cups of orange juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt, black peppercorns, garlic powder, and onion powder. If I weren't in a rush I would have used fresh onions and garlic, but powdered works fine. In fact, it's pretty hard to do serious harm to slow-cooked pork. Sometimes I'll pan-sear the ribs before slow cooking, but I don't usually find the difference in flavor or texture to be significant enough to justify the effort and time.

Tonight's featured use was in sandwich form on ciabatta rolls as the boys and I watched the USC-UCLA game (Tivo-ed, of course). Leftovers will probably be used for soft tacos, Cuban-style sandwiches, and perhaps spiced up and mixed with rice and black beans. It's delicious with Valentina hot sauce. It freezes just fine, too, so there's no need to consume all eight pounds in three days (although I easily could). And the cooking liquid with all of its tasty pig particles makes a great start on a soup once you've skimmed the fat. Something as simple as a vegetable soup with frozen peas, corn, green beans, and canned diced tomatoes is nice, especially with a splash of vinegar to brighten it up.