I have had some Costco triumphs before (feeding 50 people breakfast and lunch for $300) but I felt pretty good about feeding 6 people for $30 in an hour. You can buy a pretty substantial rack of pre-seasoned ribs at Costco for about $20.
I had a vague notion that if I put ribs in my pressure cooker, that they might come out something like braised short ribs. Accordingly, I bought a pound of pappardelle. Fortunately, as I was preparing the pressure cooker, Roommate #1 told me that she was going across the street to grill halloumi (YUM). I threw the other half of the ribs at her and asked her to have our neighbor grill them, in case some disaster happened in the pressure cooker.
The Costco ribs are totally legit after an hour on the grill. For ribs that are falling off the bone, do the following. I got about 20 ribs into the 6 quart cooker without an issue:
– cut rack into sections of 2-3 ribs (5 minutes)
– add about 3 cups of water to the pressure cooker
– squirt ketchup, barbeque sauce, Worcester sauce, steak sauce, and a little horseradish onto the ribs. I don’t ever premix this stuff, and I don’t keep track of the ratios, either. This is only an issue when I cannot replicate my previous successes. I rub the ribs on each other and get them covered as well as I can (5 minutes)
– put the ribs on top of the rack in the cooker, bring to pressure, and cook for 17 minutes. let pressure drop on stovetop
– prepare dressing: squeeze lemon into olive oil (probably with a little more thought I would have added garlic here and maybe some shallots) – 5 minutes
– cook pasta for 8 minutes, drain, don’t rinse, crack egg into pasta, stir while adding dressing and grating pepper into pasta
– you can totally do the dressing and pasta while the ribs are cooking, so this is a 30-minute, two-pot meal with a little planning
it’s not entirely necessary to finish the ribs on the grill (I was really craving a cast iron grill pan last night though). the sear definitely felt like a finishing touch (about 2 minutes on each side) but the texture etc was fine without it. the rack on the neighbor’s grill came off pretty close to the same time (they went on about 15 minutes before I fired up the pressure cooker, which, note to future self, took a LONG time to get up to pressure on the back burner)
I definitely felt the absence of pecorino last night but the grilled halloumi hit the spot pretty well.
tonight, RAGU, what’s up, losers. also, let me be the first to say that the Kirkland lobster bisque is a pretty legitimate lunch choice.