"The whole point of these posts is to ADD to the file of information. By dismissing someone else's process or by stating one's own process as THE ONE AND ONLY way of doing things discourages many from participating in this forum, in the least, and encourages others to be demeaning and distractive, at the worst." Again WOW! I thought I was simply participating. Was not trying to "put down" or "dismiss" your method of baking ribs, and I am sorry you chose to take it that way. Lighten up sweetie! This is CYBER SPACE :)

Ann_t, I've considered it but it isn't worth it for us. The Costcos are not close to us and driving to areas I don't normally visit aren't worth my time/energy/gas. I enjoy cooking but not every day. Our budget is generous for going out and that's what I most enjoy. I LOVE chicken fried steak! But it is possibly the worst thing in the world for you, LOL. Restaurant versions are okay, but The Real Thing is dynamite. I wrote up my mother's method one day, when I was doing a restaurant review of a cafe that did a decent chicken-fried steak we liked. My younger friends and family have never had this recipe, so I included it in my email as a humorous touch. BTW, I do not claim this is an authentic Southern Recipe. This is just how my JapAm mother made it when we were growing up in Chicago, after she learned it from the Mississippi AfrAms in our neighborhood: *The Traditional (e.g., home-cooked) Chicken Fried Steak Yes, this is another thing my Japanese-American mother learned to make from Southerners (Mississippians transplanted to Chicago, hence our familys love of sweet cornbread and really good fried chicken from the legendary Harolds in Chicago [you can look up Harolds Chicken in Wiki]). It can be eaten for dinner or breakfast. Or lunch. Or....well, you get the idea. Like most Southern food, it goes best with biscuits. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butterc. Definitely not the fake Pillsbury-in-a-can stuff. To the day she died (at age 84), my mothers idea of heaven would have included a hot biscuit dripping with butter. Start with decent-sized pieces of beef, well trimmed of fat. Bottom round is ideal. The mechanically tenderized "cube steak" is sheer laziness and has the wrong texture. Traditionally the pieces of bottom round meat are pounded thin with the edge of a heavy china plate (okay, my mother did use a traditional meat mallet instead). Never, under any circumstances, do you use a wet batter. Never, ever! The egg and the flour do not mix together promiscuously in a bowl; this is a worse heresy than a mechanically tenderized steak. As you are pounding the steak pieces thin, you sprinkle them generously with seasoned flour. The flour, up to a cup or more, is pounded into each steak. "Seasoned", BTW, means salt and pepper. Thats it, no garlic (powder) or onion (same). Just lots of the evil white Mortons. Heres where you get a split between the thin batter-fried and the thick batter-fired recipes. My mother was a thin batter advocate, so she fried the steak after pounding it with the flour. The opposing camp sets out a beaten egg and a pan of more seasoned flour. The steak is dipped in egg and then in flour again, making a thicker batter coating. Either way you do it, next you fry the bacon remember I said there was another whole level to this dish? The bacon doesnt actually appear anywhere else in the recipe, so you probably just nosh on the crispy strips which youve fished out of all that bacon-y, salty, greasy artery-clogging saturated rendered fat. If you happen to have rendered bacon fat on hand, why are you reading this recipe? You already know how to make this. While youre chewing and swallowing bacon, you fry the steaks really crisp in the bacon grease. This is where most restaurants fail. Its bad enough they use some kind of healthy polyunsaturated oil but to make things worse, they dont cook it long enough to really get it dark brown. Drain them on newspaper in a warm oven, while you toss leftover flour into the pan to soak up the bacon grease of course you dont drain any of the fat out, why would you do something so silly when thats where all the flavor is stirring and scraping for a few minutes to cook the flour. Then in goes the evaporated milk whole milk, not that ridiculous reduced fat stuff just enough to make a thick gravy that holds in nice clumps on the spoon. Not glue-y, just very thick. Some people make a thin gravy, but not in our house. Oh, and more pepper, too. Serve with two fried eggs. Or maybe three. Or better yet, eggs and biscuits so you can chase all that yummy gravy around the plate to sop up every bit. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butter handy. After that, you go clear out an entire field of cotton, or chop down every tree in the forest, for the next eight hours straight (as youve already worked five hours before lunch). The discovery of statins to lower cholesterol is obviously Gods way of saying that every American has a right to copious quantities of salt, fat, and cream, three times a day. Also sugar, but that goes into the coffee, tea, and peach cobbler.

A flank steak is quickly seared or grilled and thinly sliced. It is usually served rare for it to be tender. A cross rib steak roast should be braised/pot roasted. It isn't a tender cut. You want to slow cook it until it is fall apart tender. Ann

My dinner was a huge success! I'm a beginner with lots to learn and you have all been wonderful. We sliced the bones off the roast, salted liberally, and tied the ribs back on 2 days before cooking (another Serious Eats, Food Lab article - scroll down to SALT). I read that the salt will draw the moisture out at first, but then it will reabsorb the moisture along with the salt, carrying the seasoning deep within the meat. This was the only thing I did differently from a few weeks ago when I ran my trial run, and this roast was far superior. It was the same cut of meat (choice), from the same store (CostCo), and cooked the same way. So it must have been the 2 day seasoning. I let the roast sit on the counter for 2 hours, then used the Serious Eats Food Lab recipe to cook low and slow - it took 4 1/2 hours for the 11lb roast to reach 122. I did make a mistake here - instead of removing the roast from the roasting pan to sit for an hour (like I did 2 weeks ago), I simply tented the roast in the pan. I think the pan caused the roast to continue to cook. I used the same probe and oven as 2 weeks ago, so unless it went bad in that time, this has to be the reason it was overcooked. However, the flavor was fabulous, so I really have no complaints. Following the Serious Eats recipe - it did go back into the oven for 10 minutes at 500 to develop a beautiful sizzling crust. I made 2 pans of Yorkshire puddings. When everything came out of the oven and my guests were serving themselves, I popped the second pan in and proudly served a second helping to all at the table 30 minutes later. What I learned from this is the pan makes a HUGE difference! I bought a new muffin pan since I didn't have 2 and the new pan the YP's rose so high and popped right out unlike my old pan where they still looked OK, but I had to use a knife to work them out. I made my Au Jus ahead of time by making a rich stock from browning bones, oxtails, veggies for a couple of hours and them simmering them for 24 hours. I did this 2 weeks ago and froze it. Yesterday I let it simmer for another couple of hours and added any Jus from the meat before serving. I'm so glad I did this! Not only was it easier on me, but I never would have had enough Jus otherwise. Everyone took a little Au Jus cup on their plate and I put the rest into gravy boats for the table - most of which was used. I'm very proud of my dinner and I couldn't have done it without the help from all of you on this forum. :-) Thank-you! Jeri