Greetings fine folks and fellow swine enthusiasts. Welcome back to Sunday Gravy!

I guess you could call this the Belated Easter Special edition of Sunday Gravy. Bookmark this for next year or make it next week or do what you will with it. There are 2 insanely tasty recipes we will be covering and in a bit of a surprise the side dish for today’s meal could easily be considered the headliner.

Goddamn you are gonna love this fucking potato recipe.

We had a great Easter celebration at the “right” house last week. Both of my daughters, the two brothers and my youngest granddaughter were in attendance. As most of you know I’m an unrepentant heathen but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy every occasion where my family can get together, have a delicious meal and consume multiple drinks.

Easter! Fuck yes!

We had a conversation while I was preparing dinner about traditional Easter dinners and primarily why ham is considered a traditional Easter food item.

This isn’t exactly a news flash but Jesus was, you know, JEWISH! So the fuck with the ham on Easter?

Food origin time!

I know this is your favorite part!

True traditional Easter dinner should be centered around lamb as it is in most of Europe and throughout the rest of the Easter observing world. But you know us, we’re a buncha goddamn picky little sissy Marys who can’t handle the gaminess of lamb. You know me, I fucking love lamb.

So what did we do when we didn’t want lamb because of our delicate fucking sensibilities? We decided to eat ham instead. The reason ham was chosen has nothing to do with any type of religion or tradition it was simply because, well, it was ready.

Back in the days before refrigeration there was an annual fall custom where you basically butchered all the little animals before winter.

After killing, butchering and preparing the meats some meat was consumed right away while others were cured in various processes including using a smoke house. Over the winter the slabs of pig were slooow smoked with various woods over very little, or no heat in order to cure and preserve them for future use.

After a long cold winter, Spring finally shows the fuck up, the family gets together for a Spring celebration and guess what? The ham was fucking ready.

That’s why we have ham. It was fucking ready.

I’m certain many of you are familiar with Easter origin in general. There was an Anglo-Germanic deity named Eostre who represented Spring and rebirth/renewal. Her sacred animal was the rabbit and the egg was her symbol for fertility. I know I was confused as a motherfucker about why

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That is some serious, convoluted, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, American made bullshit right there!

Next thing you know you’ll tell us Santa Claus as we know him was invented by the Coca Cola company! Well actually.

So yeah.

Ham! You know what? I like ham just fine. It’s smoky and salty and quite tasty. If you ever have a chance sample some Jamón ibérico. A dry cured ham found in Spain and Portugal. Or sample some Prosciutto di Parma an Italian ham that has been cured with nothing except salt, the Italian air and a whole lot of time. Fucking delicious.

How about hickory smoked country ham, smoked and used throughout the South?

You’re going to want to rinse this salty motherfucker down for a couple of days before cooking but this is incredible when sliced thin and served with some biscuits.

As for us folks on the West Coast?

There’s our old buddy Farmer John again.

This stuff is fine. It makes a decent meal but there is just so goddamn much of it. You can have leftovers for fucking days, a freezer full of sliced ham and you get to the point where it’s a fucking ham overdose. There’s a reason why it’s only on sale twice a year. You need 6 months to build your taste for it back up.

One thing I truly love about this type of ham is the damn bone. I would be happy if I could go to the butcher shop and just get me the ham bone. Yeah, you know why .

This is my usual long and round about way of saying there was no traditional ham in the right house on Easter. If I’m given permission to go “hog wild” well, you know which way I’m gonna fucking go.

Let’s make some country style ribs instead. “Country style” ribs aren’t true ribs at all. They are cut from the pork shoulder – my favorite part of the piggy – and usually have a bone in them. They also have boneless. I had a package of each when I did this and I’m just gonna say bone-in won the Pepsi challenge hands fucking down over the boneless ones.

Let’s get after this pig.

Country Style Pork Ribs in Bourbon Barbecue Sauce!

Once again a hat tip to Epicurious.com for the inspiration but while they suggested a slow cooker I did mine in the oven for a slow braise. I find that slow cookers, while useful if you use them for an after work meal, tend to make less flavorful dishes that can be a little watered down. I wanted to punch this recipe right in the goddamn dick so we used the oven.

4 to 5 pounds of country style pork ribs, again use bone-in if possible.

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or oil of choice.

Salt and pepper

For the sauce, let’s just call this a “kitchen sink” sauce because it’s got fucking everything in it.

1 1/2 cups of ketchup (or catsup)

1/2 cup of Coke. Use full flavor full sugar traditional Coke here. Hell, make a rum and Coke with the rest.

3 tablespoons of tomato paste

3 cloves of minced garlic

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

2 tablespoons of chili sauce. Yeah, the Heinz store bought shit.

3 tablespoons of high quality bourbon. If I’m using bourbon it’s going to be:

Some motherfucking Buffalo Trace!

2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon of molasses

1 teaspoon of chili powder.

1 teaspoon of cayenne.

1 teaspoon of cumin. Yes, it was fresh toasted and ground by hand.

Combine all of the sauce ingredients together, give a good stir because molasses doesn’t like to be stirred and let rest for a few minutes.

Look! Sauce!

Let’s get a quick sear on that sexy fucking pork shall we?

Get out a large skillet or your trusty Dutch oven and heat up to medium high heat. Add in the oil and wait until the oil gets shimmery in the pan. Add in the pork in batches and let sear for about 5 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper.

You will notice these are the boneless ones. After 5 minutes get a pair of tongs and turn the ribs over.

And you will notice that these tasty looking bastards are the bone-in type. In that linked recipe to the Korean style baby backs I suggest using a disposable deep, square pan to cook these in the oven. Any time you are working with a sticky type sauce I suggest using one. They are only a couple of bucks and they usually come two to a pack.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degress.

Toss each rib in some of the sauce prior to placing in the pan. After getting all of the pig bits in the pan cover everything with the rest of the sauce. It’s gonna look like this.

While it does look like you can just dive up in this shit and go crazy these are not quite yet ready for consumption. You’re going to need some patience with this fucker. A lot of patience. How much? Three and 1/2 hours worth of patience.

Cover the entire pan tightly with aluminum foil, place on a sturdy baking pan and get this in the oven for 3 1/2 hours. You don’t need to check on the progress or stir or any damn thing. Just let the precious piggy do it’s slow roasted thang!

Let’s get after that side dish.

A traditional Easter ham accompaniment is gratin potatoes or au gratin potatoes or scalloped potatoes. These things are the gratin potatoes and I am going to tell you right here this is fucking outstanding. I could eat this every goddamn week and not bat an eye. Well it does have the fat thing and the expensive cheese thing but oh my fucking word is it delicious.

2 pounds of peeled and THIN sliced russet potatoes.

2 cloves of minced garlic.

1 pint of half and half

3/4 cup of grated gruyere cheese. I found this wedge of “cave aged” gruyere at the store.

A few slices of onion, thin sliced like the potatoes – I’ll get to that.

1/2 teaspoon of thyme

1/2 teaspoon of NUTMEG!

Some fresh grated Parmesan. Oh course it was Parmigiano Reggiano.

Salt and pepper to taste

Some fresh chopped chives for topping. How fresh?

This year’s herb garden. Oregano, chives and basil.

The best way to slice these potatoes is to use a mandolin.

Not this!

This!

I highly recommend using one of these. If you trust yourself enough that you think you can thin slice with your chefs knife don’t come crying to me if you cut yourself and start to bleed out. This is the way to go. If you have a box grater…

Those cut outs on the side there? You can use them but it’s a little trickier.

I’m going to be up front, these bitches can cut the fuck out of you too. No fucking lie. When I was making this dish I cut a perfect wedge right off the tip of my thumbnail that got my fucking attention. Be careful with this thing.

You really need to slice paper thin here. Here’s a really cool action shot that youngest right took when she visited last week.

Slice about half of the potatoes then a few slices of onion then repeat until everything is sliced and ready.

Let’s get the cheese sauce ready. Put the gruyere into a bowl and add the half and half, garlic, thyme, nutmeg and salt and pepper. Gently mix to combine together.

Put the potatoes and onions into a greased baking dish and pour the cheese sauce over everything. Put on several solid grates of the parmigianno reggiano. Next you want to press everything down flat in the baking dish. You can use your freshly washed hands or if you don’t want to get grubby you can use a spatula.

Sprinkle the fresh chives over the top.

The potatoes will go in the oven when the ribs have been cooking for 3 hours. Turn the oven temp up to 375 and the potatoes will cook for 40 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the pan of pork so it can cool down from it’s current “surface of the fucking sun” temperature. When the potatoes have cooked for the additional 10 minutes let them too rest for a few. You could basically remove every taste bud and the entire roof of your mouth if you ate these right out of the oven. Here are the finished products.

Good lord somebody get me a damn plate before I die!

Put a slab of the slow cooked piggy on to your plate. Using a spatula cut yourself a wedge of those immaculate looking potatoes and put on the plate. I finished with some fresh Spring greens.

One more time. This time with a close-up.

The sweet, salty, spicy tang of the barbecue sauce and the fatty, rich falling off of the bone pork will make you swear off ham for the rest of your life. Throw in the cheesy, rich just insanely delicious gratin potatoes and you are going to be in your very own hog heaven. I’m not lying about these potatoes, just looking at the photos again made me want to come up with another reason to make them. I highly recommend the gruyere too. It IS more expensive but you can’t really find another cheese that offers the same melt, salt and funk as it does.

This meal right here is enough to resurrect a person from the grave.

The whole damn family shared all kinds of happy accolades over this meal.

It was quite the glorious Eostre indeed.

Thanks as always for spending time with me. I truly hope you all can give some of these a try. And please if you do make any of these send me some feedback and a photo just as our own Litre-Cola did when he made my chicken parm recipe.

Thanks, man. I’m flattered as all hell.

Oh shit the draft is on Thursday and the NFL schedule came out!

Football things are in the air.

Much love as always.

Peace!