The Adventures of 'The Kidds'

Last week, Don’s uncle Jim came for a visit before we all went to a family reunion in West Virginia. Anyway, he brought with him a full rack of pork ribs (really 2 racks, still connected in the middle) for us to cook on the grill (took up the whole grill cooking surface!). There was a ton of leftovers…we had some for lunch but we still had a sizable amount left.

Because the smoky flavor of the yummy ribs (for some reason) brought to mind Chipotle’s carnitas burrito bowl, I thought it might be good to use the leftover ribs with the same flavors, but in soup form. It turned out great–here’s the recipe.

1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
About 3 cups of leftover rib meat, chopped into small pieces
1 can (14.5 oz) RedGold petite diced tomatoes with chipotle
1 can (14.5) RedGold petite diced tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can great northern beans
1 can golden sweet corn
4 cups of chicken broth

Saute onions and garlic in olive oil, add everything else, and simmer for about 30 minutes. Top with Fritos and cheese if desired.

It turned out great! If we weren’t making it for kiddos, we would probably have added more spice using diced jalapenos and possibly an actual chipotle pepper in adobe sauce. And added a dash of lime juice and some chopped cilantro. But these were the ingredients we had handy, and it worked pretty well Yummy.

Since we are now getting more eggplants (finally!) we decided to experiment with a copycat recipe of PF Chang’s spicy eggplant dish, which a friend had mentioned loving.

Since we didn’t have chili paste on hand, we used red curry paste instead, which made it a little milder probably. And we made our own bean paste by food processing fermented black beans which we already had on hand (which by the way is really good with braised pork ribs). We may use a little less next time, we used 1t instead of 1/2 this time since it wasn’t really a “paste.”

The main addition was the chicken, just 1 large breast fillet for us two, sliced into 1/4″ slices…since Don doesn’t eat vegetarian meals Also added some sliced green peppers from the garden for variety.

The result was pretty good! Too bad I didn’t think to take a picture, maybe next time!