Ribs, Ramps and Taters!

A day off you say?

• 6 hour spare ribs on the Big Green Egg
• Roasted, then twice-fried red potato salad with grilled ramps, bacon, hard boiled egg and blue cheese
• Grilled ramp soup
  

These ribs get dry rubbed with one of my secret spice blends before a 6 hour session at 225 Degrees on the BGE. Normally I baste them with a spray bottle of apple juice but I forgot to pick some up yesterday. Instead I made a mixture of beer, sugar and a little bit of soy sauce which was diluted with water and sprayed onto the ribs every hour or so.

A thinned out version of my barbecue sauce is basted on during the last 45 minutes of cooking. These ribs were so glazed that they did not need any additional sauce when they were eaten.

This is a nice cross section showing the smoke line as well as the very juicy interior of the meat.

For my ramp soup, I cleaned up about a pound of ramps. Cut the leaves off and grilled the white part of the onion. Then I simmered these grilled stalks in some very rich chicken stock that I made a couple of days ago. Eventually I ran this through the Vita-Prep until it was smooth and then finished it with cream and the raw ramp leaves. Once they were nicely wilted I adjusted seasoning and served the soup with crusty bread.

The soup had a beautiful, light, garlicly taste which really only comes from ramps.

I love ramps.

I intend to pickle a ton of them before the season is over. I also intend to make a large batch of ramp kimchi which I think will be very nice during off season!