WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're making grilled beef short ribs!
It's grilling time in our part of the world. And we've got a great, easy recipe, particularly if you can find cross-cut beef short ribs (sometimes called "flanken"). We get ours at a big-box store. We stock up every time we're there because we want this great barbecue meal a lot all summer long.
We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've published three dozen cookbooks with eight New York publishers. Our most current is THE LOOK AND COOK AIR-FRYER BIBLE, which you can find here.
This podcast lets us indulge some of our passions: food and cooking. (Bruce is off on knitting adventures on his own; Mark has a podcast solely focused on walking slowly through Dante's DIVINE COMEDY.)
We're glad you're with us. Thanks for being a part of our journey.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[00:56] Our one-minute cooking tip: Clean your grill AFTER every use.
[02:32] We're making grilled, cross-cut, beef short ribs!
Here's how:
Put all of this in a turbo blender or a food processor to make a marinade:
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and cut into 1-inch or 2 1/2-cm chunks;
1 medium Asian pear (about 6 ounces or 170 grams);
5 peeled, medium garlic cloves;
one 1-inch or 2 1/2-cm piece of peeled fresh ginger, cut into smaller chunks;
1 cup or 250 milliliters soy sauce;
1/2 cup or 125 milliliters water;
1/4 cup or 55 grams packed light brown sugar;
2 tablespoons or 30 milliliters mirin;
and 1 tablespoon or 4 grams freshly ground black pepper.
Blend until a smooth puree, then pour into a very large, zip-seal plastic bag. Add about 3 pounds or 1.4 kilograms of cross-cut beef short ribs. Massage the puree into the meat, seal, and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours or up to 8 hours.
Grill over direct high heat 3 - 4 minutes per side. Cut them into chunks with at least one oval bone in each. Serve with cooked white or brown rice and lots of kimchi.
Garnish with minced scallions and sesame seeds.
[13:52] What’s making us happy in food this week: affirmation from others on our TikTok channel and homemade kimchi!
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is a podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Skarbrough.
Speaker:And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen now
Speaker:going on to the 37th cookbook.
Speaker:It is in editorial production right now.
Speaker:It won't be out until 2025, so we have a lot of time to talk about that.
Speaker:But in the meantime, this is our podcast about food and cooking,
Speaker:which are the passions in our life.
Speaker:Minus . knitting and Dante.
Speaker:But those are other stories.
Speaker:So this is Dante knit.
Speaker:No, Dante never knitted.
Speaker:That's that made my brain hurt when you said that.
Speaker:Um, this podcast about food and cooking in which we are not making our brains
Speaker:hurt, but we are talking about our passions and we're going to talk about
Speaker:a one minute cooking tip for your grill.
Speaker:We have got a recipe.
Speaker:We're in the kitchen on this episode of the podcast, making a barbecue short
Speaker:rib recipe And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip.
Speaker:If you're cooking outdoors, clean your grill.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Every time.
Speaker:In fact, whenever you use it, would you cook in a dirty saute pan?
Speaker:Would you put a roast beef in a dirty roasting pan?
Speaker:Oh, it's a big TikTok thing right now is to show nasty pans full of
Speaker:things that are dirty, and then you're making a fried egg in them.
Speaker:It's a whole thing.
Speaker:You shouldn't be putting.
Speaker:Uh, hamburger on a filthy grill.
Speaker:Well, no.
Speaker:It's not going to taste good.
Speaker:And the way you do it is There's other problems besides taste, but go on.
Speaker:Leave your grill on high and covered for a few minutes after you're
Speaker:done cooking each and every time.
Speaker:It will burn off the remnants and then you can use a metal Yeah, if you
Speaker:haven't bought a metal grill brush, it's high time you do.
Speaker:It allows you to scrape off what the high heat burns onto the grate.
Speaker:It's really important for cleaning your grates.
Speaker:Make sure you clean your grill every time.
Speaker:Okay, before we get to that, to the kitchen and making barbecued short
Speaker:ribs, which also involve a grill.
Speaker:Let me say that we have a newsletter cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:Isn't that clever?
Speaker:We named everything the same thing.
Speaker:Cleo Bruce and Mark comes out about twice a month.
Speaker:You can sign up for that on our website, cooking with Bruce and mark.
Speaker:com or Bruce and mark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:Boy, we really tied this all together.
Speaker:You can sign up.
Speaker:There on the splash page, there's a way that you can drop your
Speaker:name into the subscription list.
Speaker:Let me remind you that I don't capture your name and email and I
Speaker:don't allow the provider to sell it.
Speaker:So, uh, that costs us a little more money, but it ensures privacy and
Speaker:you can unsubscribe at any time.
Speaker:The newsletter has recipes like this in it, and it also has other
Speaker:bits as well about our lives.
Speaker:So let's get on to the kitchen and making barbecue short ribs.
Speaker:ever been to a Korean barbecue restaurant?
Speaker:You've probably had these.
Speaker:They're called Galbi there.
Speaker:And these are, as Mark said, barbecue short ribs, but not your
Speaker:kind of short ribs you're used to.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, uh, don't write in about Bruce's Korean accent because even I, even
Speaker:I heard that as horrible, but yes, sometimes these are a kind of short rib
Speaker:that are served in Korean restaurants.
Speaker:So what do we got here on the counter?
Speaker:Three pounds
Speaker:of flanken style short ribs.
Speaker:Basically, flanken style means instead of the big, fat, four inch, one bone
Speaker:short ribs you're used to, the butcher cuts across the whole plate of four ribs,
Speaker:and you get these thin slices, about a quarter inch, of meat and fat and bone.
Speaker:And
Speaker:your grandmother called these flanken.
Speaker:We, the rest of the world, called these cross cut short, beef short ribs.
Speaker:We don't call them flanken.
Speaker:Your grandmother made soup, and what did she make?
Speaker:Did she make vegetable soup?
Speaker:Oh, no, she
Speaker:put them in, she put them in simis.
Speaker:So it was with roasted potatoes and carrots and prunes and flunkin.
Speaker:And where can you get them?
Speaker:Well, we're lucky.
Speaker:We found them at Costco.
Speaker:We do.
Speaker:But a lot of Asian markets have them.
Speaker:And you can also then go to a kosher butcher.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Because they always got them.
Speaker:I'll wait.
Speaker:Okay, great.
Speaker:I live in Flatbush?
Speaker:Yeah, no.
Speaker:Okay, I don't live in Flatbush.
Speaker:Um, I live in Tulsa.
Speaker:And so I'm going to go to a kosher Muncie, New York?
Speaker:Okay, there are kosher butchers in Muncie, New York.
Speaker:But again But they're not going to let you in.
Speaker:And Tulsa.
Speaker:I'm gonna go to the kosher, but maybe there is.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Write in and tell us if there's a kosher butcher shop in
Speaker:Tulsa, but I kind of doubt it.
Speaker:Um, uh, since I grew up partly in Oklahoma City, I kind of really doubt it.
Speaker:But, uh, okay, this is another matter.
Speaker:Now, what we're going to do is we're going to make a really simple, uh,
Speaker:sweet and spicy marinade, and we're going to do this really easily.
Speaker:We're going to make this marinade in a NutriBullet.
Speaker:So here's what's going in it.
Speaker:We're going to start with a medium yellow onion that has been peeled.
Speaker:You don't have to be super careful here, but you want to cut it
Speaker:into about one inch pieces, about 200 grams or seven ounce onion.
Speaker:We have one inch pieces.
Speaker:Asian pear, and those are easy to find in most supermarkets.
Speaker:If you can't find it, then use a regular pear, but you want it to be
Speaker:really crisp, not soft, and I'm not gushy and juicy, and I'm peeling it
Speaker:because I don't want the peel in this.
Speaker:And then we're going to cut it into one inch pieces.
Speaker:I am going to cut the seeds out because I don't want them to go in a Nutribullet.
Speaker:This, this, uh, this pair is about six ounces or 170 grams.
Speaker:And let me just also say that we're using a Nutribullet, but you don't have
Speaker:to have a Nutribullet to make this.
Speaker:You can make this in a Vitamix.
Speaker:You can make this in any turbo blender, a Blendtec, a Vitamix,
Speaker:any of those really powerful ones.
Speaker:And you can even do this in a food processor, but you're gonna have to
Speaker:stop the processor repeatedly and scrape down the sides of the canister.
Speaker:The insides of the canister.
Speaker:Because we've had people write in and tell us that they scraped
Speaker:down the outside of the can.
Speaker:Nothing happened.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Anyway, you scrape down the inside of the can.
Speaker:I just can't deal with it.
Speaker:Um, it's like that woman on Tic Tac.
Speaker:There's a woman going around Tic Tac right now who has really bad viral videos and
Speaker:she's claiming that water is not hydrating because there's no hydrogen in it.
Speaker:And I'm like, I just can't even, I can't even deal with you.
Speaker:I mean, did you flunk fourth grade that you don't know that water has hydrogen?
Speaker:So, and hydrating and hydrogen are different things.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:So scrape down the inside of your food processor and then we're going to add five
Speaker:peeled garlic.
Speaker:You could buy them peeled in a jar.
Speaker:make your life easier and ginger.
Speaker:I've got a one inch piece of fresh ginger and I'm just chopping
Speaker:it into smaller pieces to make sure that the blender purees.
Speaker:So, and
Speaker:then in addition to that, I'm putting in a cop or 240 milliliters of soy sauce.
Speaker:Just use regular soy sauce.
Speaker:You can use low sodium, but we're talking pretty standard.
Speaker:So he says here, you don't have to get fancy because, um, this look at how many,
Speaker:Things are going together with this and
Speaker:especially because we're watering it down right with half a cup or 120
Speaker:ml of water and then sweetening it up with a quarter cup or 55 grams of
Speaker:packed light brown sugar you can use dark if you want adds a little more
Speaker:flavor I like the light because then you really taste the ginger and then
Speaker:two tablespoons or 30 milliliters of Murine that is a sweetened rice
Speaker:wine If you don't want to use murine and don't want to buy it You can use
Speaker:unsweetened apple juice in its place and a tablespoon of fresh black pepper.
Speaker:That's a lot.
Speaker:That's a lot.
Speaker:So if you're grinding it, grind a long
Speaker:time.
Speaker:Okay, so we're ready.
Speaker:So all of these things are in the Nutribullet.
Speaker:I am going to put it on the machine and make a puree out of this.
Speaker:We don't get paid by Nutribullet, but I should tell you that
Speaker:it is an amazing tool.
Speaker:I actually got a Nutribullet because I saw a lot of, I follow a ton, you
Speaker:probably know this, of UK vegan chefs.
Speaker:I'm not vegan, but when I cook, I'm the writer, Bruce is the chef.
Speaker:And when I cook more and more, I tend to cook vegan and I follow all these
Speaker:UK vegan chefs and they are amazing.
Speaker:All are just crazed for their Nutribullets.
Speaker:So eventually I was like, Hey, I have to be a cool kid.
Speaker:I have to get a Nutribullet.
Speaker:So I got one.
Speaker:And I
Speaker:love it.
Speaker:They are amazing because everything is contained in it.
Speaker:And it's the mess is very
Speaker:low.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:So I'm going to pour this mixture now over the ribs, which
Speaker:I have put into a Ziploc bag.
Speaker:I should just note that this is a
Speaker:big Ziploc bag.
Speaker:It's the gallon size.
Speaker:It is holding all three.
Speaker:pounds of these ribs.
Speaker:And this way I could seal it up.
Speaker:I could mush it around.
Speaker:I could massage these ribs, make sure that that marinade
Speaker:is getting all over everything.
Speaker:I am still going to put this bag in a bowl because Ziploc
Speaker:bags have been known to leak.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So rather than put that in the refrigerator, make a
Speaker:mess, it goes into a bowl.
Speaker:Now it goes in to the refrigerator and it is going to marinate for at least
Speaker:two hours or do it in the morning and you can have it go all day.
Speaker:I'm going to come back in two hours and we're going to grill these up.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We've come back and we are outside now we're out on our back deck
Speaker:and you can probably hear that there's birds all around us.
Speaker:We live deep in the new England mountains in the woods, uh, deep to say the least.
Speaker:It's a long way, even to a gas station from our house.
Speaker:What like 15 minutes from the gas station and a long way to a
Speaker:decent supermarket from our house.
Speaker:Anyway, we've got the gas grill going.
Speaker:You can do this over charcoal.
Speaker:You don't have to use gas.
Speaker:Gas is easy.
Speaker:And so we're being easy here and using a gas grill.
Speaker:Sometimes Bruce will break out the charcoal grill.
Speaker:It just depends.
Speaker:It does depend on my mood.
Speaker:It depends on how much the meat costs.
Speaker:But the most important thing here is to
Speaker:get the grill
Speaker:hot.
Speaker:I turn all the burners on and I cover the grill lid while it heats up.
Speaker:650 degrees, which is really, really hot.
Speaker:And I'm going to put.
Speaker:these ribs on the grill and you hear that sizzle and that is absolutely
Speaker:what you want and there is some fat in this so they are going to flame up
Speaker:so you want to cook it closed you get less Flame happening less so right
Speaker:over the heat.
Speaker:In other words, as they say in grilling, direct, direct heat, in other words, not
Speaker:to the side of the heat, but right over.
Speaker:Even if you've built a cold bed and a charcoal grill, and these
Speaker:are gonna go about three to four minutes aside, you can turn them.
Speaker:It sometimes helps if there's a little sugar here and it can stick a little bit,
Speaker:not much, but it can stick usually by the time it's done, the sticking doesn't
Speaker:matter anymore, but if it sticks, just use a spatula to get underneath them.
Speaker:Preferably a silicon spatula to get underneath them.
Speaker:So we're gonna let these go and then flip them and then come back
Speaker:to taste them when they're done.
Speaker:We're back inside now and we have cooked these, as I said,
Speaker:three to four minutes a side.
Speaker:What you want them is nice and charred.
Speaker:I know you think short ribs have to go for forever in a braise, but these
Speaker:are cross cut and thin, you know, as we said, a quarter, half inch thick.
Speaker:So we're talking about a
Speaker:centimeter thick.
Speaker:They're thick.
Speaker:They're tender.
Speaker:These are so good.
Speaker:And they get a little blackened.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And they're charred down.
Speaker:Here's what we do.
Speaker:We use a scissor to cut them into bite sized pieces to cut in between the bones.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it looks like a little eye.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:It does.
Speaker:I've actually been to restaurants where they cut it off the
Speaker:bone and then into pieces.
Speaker:But I like having the bone on there.
Speaker:I like picking up the bone.
Speaker:I like chewing this meat off the bone.
Speaker:So I'm gonna.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We have chopsticks, of course.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:wait.
Speaker:Now, we're not done.
Speaker:We're not done?
Speaker:I want to try it.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Uh, we have to actually sprinkle them with minced scallions and sesame seeds.
Speaker:He's just really crazy here.
Speaker:He's trying to get in here too fast.
Speaker:I'm hungry.
Speaker:Okay, really, seriously, it's 2 p.
Speaker:m.
Speaker:Okay, um I'm always hungry.
Speaker:Eugenwald.
Speaker:So, notice that the Christian said Eugenwald.
Speaker:Uh, we'm gonna put mint scallions and sesame seeds all over the top of this,
Speaker:and then we're gonna actually drizzle a little toasted sesame oil over the top.
Speaker:These are our garnishes.
Speaker:Do you have to do this?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:And also, may I say, a little Oh, so you don't have to do it, but you make me wait.
Speaker:And a little bit of chopped peanut butter.
Speaker:would be also welcome here.
Speaker:So all of that can go on top of
Speaker:this.
Speaker:You don't need a dipping sauce,
Speaker:but
Speaker:if you want to make one, you could do a peanut sauce.
Speaker:That would be nice.
Speaker:You could.
Speaker:But we're not doing it, and we're just going to try these.
Speaker:You
Speaker:sure you can't use Thousand Island dressing?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Your mayonnaise based dressing for your Korean short ribs.
Speaker:Yum.
Speaker:Okay, so here we go.
Speaker:Uh, I, these are really sweet and irresistible.
Speaker:They're hard to turn down.
Speaker:Do you mind if I eat all three pounds?
Speaker:Yeah, no, well, go ahead.
Speaker:It's two o'clock in the afternoon, as I said.
Speaker:Um, it's your funeral.
Speaker:Well, no, actually, if you die, it's my funeral.
Speaker:I mean, it's my funeral I have to throw.
Speaker:So don't inconvenience me with your funeral.
Speaker:God, I hate being inconvenienced with death.
Speaker:I'll eat two pounds.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:These are so good.
Speaker:Oh, good.
Speaker:And you
Speaker:know, often these would be served with rice and kimchi
Speaker:and with Boston lettuce leaves.
Speaker:When do you see your
Speaker:cardiologist again?
Speaker:Uh, next year.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:Well, then eat up.
Speaker:Have fun.
Speaker:Knock yourself out.
Speaker:Just don't inconvenience me with that death stuff.
Speaker:Hey, you know, statins are wonderful.
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:They allow
Speaker:you to eat anything.
Speaker:No, they do not actually, but that's a whole different podcast.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So that's the whole episode of how to make these short ribs.
Speaker:It's, it's weird, right?
Speaker:With an onion, pear, garlic marinade, soy sauce, uh, sugar.
Speaker:pepper.
Speaker:It's a It's a It's a wild combination.
Speaker:It yields a sweet and extremely irresistible short rib on the grill.
Speaker:And it's very fast.
Speaker:Once you throw this marinade together so fast and stick it in the fridge
Speaker:and let it really get marinated good and then grill it only minutes total
Speaker:on a high heat grill at direct heat.
Speaker:It's really fast.
Speaker:So that's our recipe for this episode of the podcast.
Speaker:Before we get to the final traditional segment, what's making us happy
Speaker:and food this week, let me say that it would be great if you could
Speaker:subscribe to this podcast, and if you could give it a rating of any sort,
Speaker:you Even great job or five stars.
Speaker:Dare I ask for it?
Speaker:That would be fantastic.
Speaker:Thank you for doing that.
Speaker:And we're going to continue with what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:What's making me happy is actually something that happened because of food.
Speaker:We have a tick tock channel flatulence.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:Mark and I have a TikTok channel, of course, called
Speaker:Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And we recently posted a video of Mark making creme anglaise
Speaker:with coconut milk for me.
Speaker:And someone left a comment on that that is making me very happy.
Speaker:And they said how nice it was to see an older, Gay couple doing
Speaker:this, showing a happy life at home.
Speaker:You can tell it's TikTok.
Speaker:Older gay couple.
Speaker:And it just, he said it was very inspiring and wonderful
Speaker:for us to be out there doing it.
Speaker:And that's what's making me happy in food this week.
Speaker:It's a very
Speaker:sweet thing.
Speaker:What's making me happy in food this week is that we are well into
Speaker:summer and we are making kimchi.
Speaker:Well, we.
Speaker:Bruce is making kimchi.
Speaker:We is a big word here.
Speaker:Bruce is making kimchi from scratch.
Speaker:It would go with these short ribs really well.
Speaker:If you want to know how to make the kimchi we make every summer,
Speaker:there's a video of it on our YouTube channel, cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:It's all cooking with Bruce and Mark from here on out.
Speaker:Uh, on our YouTube channel, there's a, there's a, uh, video of Bruce making it.
Speaker:You have to get it yourself, a giant industrial plastic tub to make this stuff.
Speaker:But we, I should say we make it in the fridge and it's sours in the fridge.
Speaker:And you don't have to worry about room temperature fermentation,
Speaker:which is really good.
Speaker:It will eventually ferment in the fridge.
Speaker:It just takes a little longer.
Speaker:And, um, it's really delicious.
Speaker:It's so spicy and so much more nuanced than the kimchi you can buy at the store.
Speaker:I can't get enough of it.
Speaker:So that's the episode of our podcast this week.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us.
Speaker:We certainly appreciate.
Speaker:Your time with us.
Speaker:We hope that you'll check us out on our Facebook group, cooking
Speaker:with Bruce and Mark, where this recipe and other things will appear
Speaker:and we tell you what's making us happy in food each week.
Speaker:So go to that Facebook group, cooking with Bruce and Mark and share with us
Speaker:what's making you happy in food this week.
Speaker:And maybe it'll be something that we'll try here on our podcast,
Speaker:cooking with Bruce and Mark.
