Always Document!

Sometimes I find a recipe and think it's something I ought to make. However, when I finally get around to pulling it out, I don't have the ingredients I need or it doesn't sound as interesting as it originally did.

And that's how Great Kitchen Experiments begin.

More often than not, the Great Kitchen Experiment is a great success (but would we really expect anything less?!) and The Boy asks me to make it again. My reply is that I don't know what I did - it was An Experiment.

He finds this more than a little frustrating. His new plea when I head to the kitchen is Always document! Don't experiment without documentation!

After our purchase of 1/4 of poor old {tasty} Ribeye, we ended up with lots of ground beef and wonderful steaks, but also some cuts that we'd normally not use, like roasts and short ribs. The roasts have been chopped and are slowly making their way into pots of chili and the like.

The ribs? They are proving to be more difficult. We are simply not rib-eating people.

I found a somewhat-interesting recipe, pinned it to my Pinterest for future reference. The other day I finally got around to making the recipe and learned I didn't have half of the ingredients that were required.

I winged it - and we liked it. And this time, I documented.

Beef Short Ribs and Chipotle Pan-Fried Potatoes

• Beef short ribs (I used about 1.5 lb)
• Leftover wine (approx 1 cup)
• Beef stock (approx 3 cups)
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• Garlic (about 2 cloves)
• Diced tomatoes (equiv to 1 can)
• 1 large russet potato, peeled and diced
• 3/4 c sour cream
• 1 T chopped chipotle
• 1 T adobo sauce
• Olive oil

Brown short ribs in a small amount of olive oil. Place in crockpot, bone side down. Top with onion, diced tomatoes, garlic, stock and wine. Cook on low 8-9 hours.

Remove ribs from crockpot. Remove meat from bones, cutting away any fat. Chop into bite-sized pieces. Remove sauce from crockpot, strain out any bones and fat. Reserve sauce for later use.

Boil diced potatoes until just tender. Heat 1 T olive oil in skillet, add drained potatoes. Saute approximately 5 minutes until nicely browned. Stir in chipotle, adobo, sour cream and sauce from crockpot. Heat until warmed through. Serve with rib meat.