This weekend Ash and I went down to Mr. and Mrs. Hayes house. I reminded myself that they had given us a cast iron skillet a couple weeks back when we had visited. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes prepared “make your own pizza,” which was actually a pretty sick idea. I will post on that later.

While I was at the Hayes house…I knew right when I got home (Sunday) I was going to go for round two on the macaroni and cheese I tried last week…but this time paired with a beef short rib via the skillet.

Bacon wrapped Beef Short Ribs in a cast iron skillet…cooking a a medium/ low/ lower heat

Let me quickly start with the Mac and Cheese…I again have not figured out how to make this correctly. I was maybe 2 points better than my attempt last week but overall still off. This time I used primarily Beechers Flagship, butter, milk and flour. Again preparing a roux (without water this time) and stirred in the cheese, while occasionally adding milk. The taste was basically there but off enough for me to want to try again. I am really thinking I will go for Velveeta 🙂 if I can not make a gourmet mac and cheese this next time, probably this coming weekend.

Moving on.

Whole Foods in South Lake Union has a pretty awesome meat department and while I am good at preparing rack of lamb, ribs, prime rib, burgers, chicken… I have always wanted to try cooking Beef Short Ribs. They seem like the perfect rectangular piece of meat. First off they are cheap*…and if you Google a couple things about beef short ribs, you will find that most sites/ bloggers prefer to cook beef short ribs over a longer period of time. I don’t have the patience. Even the meat monger at Whole Foods said to cook “low and slow.” I told him that I do not think I could wait that long so he said…”cook it bone side down then.” YES! Now that make sense. I picked up some peppered bacon and regular smoked bacon. Between 4 beef short ribs and bacon I was out of Whole Foods for about $16 <– first time ever FYI…*Beef short ribs are like $5 to $6 a pound.

Added the Rosemary and Thyme to the skillet

When I got back to our condo, I grabbed the cast iron skillet, made a quick rub of cayenne, paprika, the smallest pinch ever of (truffle salt, curry powder), rosemary, thyme and ground pepper…then wrapped each beef short rib with 1 peppered bacon and 1 smoked bacon and placed on the medium low heated skillet. I cooked for about 1 hr and 10 minutes flipping to cook on each side every 17 ish minutes.

While the Beef spare ribs were cooking, I tried to make Mac and Cheese again.

When the spare ribs were done. I plated on top of my 6/10 rated Mac and Cheese.

Skillet-ted Beef Short Rib on top of 6 out of 10 Macaroni and Cheese shells.

I do not know what the Beef spare ribs would have tasted like slow cooked…but I can say…I think the way I did it worked. Cooking with a cast iron skillet is awesome.

Hey Mr. Hayes…is the dutch oven clean yet 🙂 ?