Last week I had a town trip planned. Town trip days are a big deal because we live over an hour from town, and a town day pretty much shoots the whole day.

I like to plan ahead, but Glenn often can’t…so, as happens not infrequently, he told me the night before the town day to expect another 9 people for dinner the next night. And these people weren’t going to be small appetite types. They were going to work hard outside all day, and they were going to be hungry.

I made All Day Short Ribs for a crowd:

6 packs of short ribs (about 2.5-3 lbs each)
2 cans Italian diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste
1 cup strong coffee
1 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 onions, diced very fine
8 garlic cloves, diced fine
1 tablespoon cumin
2 tablespoons mixed Italian herbs
lots of coarse ground pepper

I mixed all the tomatoes, sweeteners, and seasonings (except the pepper) with enough water to make it pour-able. (I would have liked to brown the ribs, but I didn’t have time. It still turned out great.) I single-layered the ribs in glass baking dishes, and poured the tomato mix over them and ground a bunch of pepper over everything. I covered the dishes tightly with foil (don’t let the foil touch the tomato-covered ribs–the acid will start to eat the foil-yuck). I put them in a low oven (about 180′F). The ribs baked at that temperature for around 9 hours. About 2.5 hours before dinner, I had a kid put into the oven about 25 baking potatoes. About 2 hours before dinner, I had one of the kids take the foil off the ribs and turn the oven up to 350′F for 30-40 minutes until the ribs started browning. They had to add a bit of water before turning up the oven, but this will be variable depending on your oven convection, and how well you covered the ribs with the foil. You want the sauce around the ribs to be liquid enough to not burn, but not watery like soup. After the top surface browned, they turned the oven down to warm and waited for me to come home.

We added a giant tossed salad and there was plenty of food for everyone.