These delicious ribs are Jeff's creation. Jeff loves loves loves garlic! These ribs are cooked for a long time so they develop a deep rich and delicious flavor. Everyone in your family will thoroughly enjoy this recipe! Best part - it's super easy!!
Ingredients:
2 lbs short rib
8 peeled whole cloves of garlic
1 tbs canola oil
8 garlic cloves with skin
1 tbs adobo
1/2 tsp dried oregano
First thing we need to do is season our beef before we get it into the oven. Now as the name of this dish suggests, you’re going to need a lot of garlic so start by breaking down your peeled garlic. Here, I’m using a garlic press to crush the garlic right into our canola oil. If you wanted to use a knife and mince your garlic, that would work fine as well. I like the garlic press because it quickly reduces your garlic into a paste that you can use to coat your meat. Additionally, I think the crushing releases more garlic-y flavor than chopping it--but honestly that’s pure speculation.
Once you’ve crushed your garlic into your canola oil, just give it a quick stir to make sure it’s all combined. Again, the reason for mixing the garlic with a little oil is to help it stick better to the meat’s surface.
Now with our garlic prepared, back to our meat. Start by coating the ribs with adobo. Make sure to turn the ribs as you go so you coat all sides. It may seem like a lot of adobo as you are applying it, but trust me, you want to add plenty of seasoning at this stage. As you slowly cook the ribs, they are going to release a lot of fat and juices that will wash away your adobo so if you don’t add enough now, you’ll end up with bland ribs.
Once you’ve added your adobo, slather on your garlic mixture--again making sure to coat all sides of the ribs.
Generally, when cooking my ribs, I like to cook them with the bone side down. This way, the bone can insulate the meat from radiant heat from below and it also allows a prettier presentation at the end, because the meat side is nice and crisp. You’ll notice that I cooked one rib upside down because I wanted to see if it made a difference--and yes, I can confirm that cooking bone-on-the-bottom is the way to go.
Once you’ve added your garlic, sprinkle on your oregano and then add your unpeeled garlic. Again, this second tranche of garlic is there primarily for the sauce we are going to put together later, so don’t fret about where you place them.
Now, with your meat all seasoned, let’s get it in the oven. Arrange it in the center of a baking tray and then cover it tightly with aluminum foil. This part is key, so make sure to take the time to do it right. You want to trap all of the liquids inside of the tray, so you need to make sure you seal all of the edges. Use as much aluminum foil as you need.
Once your meat is wrapped, turn your oven on to 250 degrees fahrenheit and bake your ribs in the oven for two and a half hours. This long bake time ensures your meat is super tender. And the low temperature ensures that nothing burns.
After the two and a half hours, pull out your ribs and remove the foil. You should see that your ribs have softened substantially--without burning--and there should be a fair amount of liquid in the bottom of your tray. We want to save all of this liquid before we turn up the heat on our ribs, so quickly transfer your ribs to a clean plate, and then drain all of the cooking liquids into a bowl.
Then put the ribs back on the tray, and put them back in the oven for another 45 minutes, this time at 350 degrees fahrenheit. This second bake time is going to finish up the cooking and really help melt down any of the fat that is still intact.
Now back to the cooking liquid we removed from the baking tray. This is pure liquid gold! Honestly, if this was the end of the recipe and all I did was use this liquid as a dipping sauce for some crusty bread, I would not complain. The roasted garlic and oregano give this an incredible flavor and there is so much potential here.
But since I promised you short ribs, let’s go ahead and use this liquid gold to put together a quick sauce to add back on top of our ribs, once they are finished.
Start by fishing out the pieces of garlic from the liquid. We need to separate the roasted garlic flesh from the skins, and the easiest way I’ve found to do that is just with a paring knife. Hold the garlic skin on one end and then use your paring knife to squeeze out the garlic inside. Once you’ve harvested all of this, return it to your small bowl and discard the skins.
Now back to the cooking liquid. You’ll notice that the cooking liquid separates out into two layers. The layer on top is fat and the layer underneath is water. I want to separate these two parts so I can cook them separately. To do this, I’m using a gravy separator, which does just that.
Just add all of the liquid into the separator, and then you use it to dispense the water from the bottom of the container, until the only thing remaining is the oil. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to make your sauce.
Start by adding all of the oil to a pan on high heat. Once it’s hot, go ahead and add 1 teaspoon of flour and cook the flour, stirring constantly, until it starts to brown. Once your flour begins to brown, add in the roasted garlic pieces and cook briefly, using your spatula to squish the garlic into small pieces. Once your garlic has started to brown, pull it off of the heat. You don’t want to burn your garlic at this stage, so be very careful.
Now add the rest of the cooking liquid to your pan and cook until it begins to thicken. Once thickened it’s ready and you can set it aside to cool.
No back to our ribs. By now, they should be looking golden and really starting to crisp up. I like to add a little extra sear to my ribs before serving, so once the 45 minutes are up, turn your oven to broil and broil your ribs for 1-2 minutes. Make sure to watch your ribs closely--every oven is different and you don’t want to burn your ribs. Once broiled your ribs are all ready to go.
I always associate short ribs with fine dining, so I decided to fancy up our plating and add a little bit of rice and cilantro oil to the plate, before adding the beef rib and topping it with our delicious roasted garlic sauce. All ready to eat now!
Check out our instructional video, showing how to make this recipe step-by-step HERE.