Greek Ribs with Tzatziki

dried bay leaves in a coffee grinder

[js]
Another day, another recipe from Peter of Kalofagas. ;)

We've made several of Peter's recipes and all of them have turned out excellently.

We've discovered Peter's blog more than 6 months ago and we have never looked back since. As most of you know Peter, I'm sure you will agree that Peter is one of the nicest, most gracious bloggers around. He has been very generous with his time, very encouraging of new and veteran bloggers alike.

What I find absolutely amazing about Peter is how much he does! He reads our blogs, leaves pithy and witty comments, he cooks, he posts, he takes pictures. . . all at an incredibly high-powered pace!

How do you do it, Peter? What's the secret, Peter?

Peter probably does the work of 4 people combined, and the only explanation we can come up with is all that Greek food!

Hence, methinks we'll be making more of Peter's Greek food and see if that transforms us from lazy slowpokes into Energizer bunnies. ;)



[ts]
We had some ribs the other day and I didn't want to do yet another BBQ version. JS said she recalled a Greek version on Peter's site so off I went to look for it.

From what I've gathered, bay leaf powder is crucial to this recipe. But of course, since we thought to cook this just then and didn't have time to go out and look for bay leaf powder, I simply placed some bay leaves in a coffee grinder and ground them up.



[ts]
Ta-da!

Well, some pieces were still biggish, but this still worked. Now onto the rest of the recipe!

The recipe called for making a dry rub using onion powder and garlic powder, among other things. Lemon pepper too. We didn't have any of those three items on hand: onion and garlic powders we never have in our pantry, and I didn't know what lemon pepper was! I can only assume that it had something to do with black pepper and lemons.



[ts]
So, I made a wet rub instead. I used actual onion and garlic in place of the powders and added a generous amount of black pepper and some lemon zest in place of the lemon pepper.


wet rub ingredients

[ts]
The rest of the rub ingredients were ground bay leaves, dried oregano, dried thyme, salt and sweet paprika. I added a little bit of olive oil as well.

I rubbed them all over the ribs. I don't know how long we let it marinade for... probably not a long time because we had to make sure it was ready by dinner time.



[ts]
To cook it, we did our standard method for oven ribs: I covered the pan with aluminum foil and baked the ribs in a slow oven (325F-350F) and forgot about them for a while. After about 2 hours, I uncovered the pan and raised the heat to 375/400F and cooked until the ribs browned. You can also broil them as an alternative method after the slow-cooking.



[ts]
Look at that Greek rib goodness!

We ate ours with some spaghetti and greens. Oh, these Greek ribs were served with tzatziki, of course.



[js]
These Greek ribs were fantastic!

In the beginning, we were debating whether to use 2 slabs of the side ribs or 1. We ended up being prudent and used only 1 (cut up into 2 racks) because we didn't want to have too much food leftover.

Wrong decision! Should have used 2 slabs.

The bay leaves gave the ribs a wonderful woodsy deep flavour and the smoked paprika gave them that hint of smoke, so essential to my carnivorous enjoyment of meat, meat, meat!

I've had Greek ribs in restaurants before and these evoke those quite authentically. In fact, these are probably better than those. Lipsmackingly delicious!

The only thing I was missing were lemon-roasted potatoes. Maybe next time.



Peter's recipe here: Baby Back Ribs from the Greek Side

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