Tex-Mex lamb ribs
I've
been trying out several new recipes as part of our goal of turning
an entire lamb into delicious dinners, and one of my favorites has
been Tex-Mex Lamb Ribs. First, mix together:
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 0.25 cups balsamic vinegar
- 0.25 cups lemon juice
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 0.5 tsp black pepper
- 1.25 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp honey*
*This is the only part of the recipe I didn't measure. I just
drizzled
in a bit of honey since the recipe I was tweaking called for
storebought orange marmalade and I was replacing it with lemon juice
and honey.
Pour the marinade over
about 1.5 pounds of lamb ribs and let them sit in the fridge
overnight. Then pour the whole mass into a covered baking dish
and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours.
It's far from mandatory,
but I threw in a handful of asparagus spears for the last 15 minutes to
take advantage of the extra juices. And after we ate the ribs, I
saved the marinade/fat to make the base of some turkey burritos and Lucy
munched up the bones --- nothing wasted!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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We tried this tonight. I ordered lamb ribs from my butcher, and made the marinade with a few substitutions. (chopped up orange bits for the lemon and maple syrup for the honey, apple cider vinegar instead of balsamic). It was very good but there was almost no meat basically 1 lb made enough for one meal for two people. I wonder if your ribs were very low meat or if it has to do with my butcher's lambs ( he felt there was so little meat he actually gave me the ribs for free because he did not believe there was any meat).
I wonder if ribs might be better served by being boiled for hours to make a rich broth.
I did not seem much fat on the ribs. it was mostly bone with a tiny bit of meat between each bone and some connective tissue. The lamb was also grass fed. The ribs were a long strip probably the length of the rib cage and two strips were 1 lb. but the bones were cut so they were only ~4 inches long. I suspect that the more meaty/fatty upper part of the ribs is sold as a different cut of meat.
We turned the recipe back to what it was originally because I did not want to go shopping so I used what I had in the house, and the fact it was originally orange marmalade gave me the courage to use fresh oranges rather than running out to buy lemons.
I'm all for substitutions!
Now that you mention it, my ribs were actually labeled "riblets". I looked that up on Wikipedia, and there seem to be riblets, button ribs (aka feather bones), and rib tips (aka brisket). Not sure which your ribs were --- maybe rib tips? I'm also not quite sure I understood the descriptions --- I clearly need to learn a bit more anatomy.