Short Ribs in Chicago: A Keeper!

What could be better than getting together with three of your best friends for a weekend in Chicago?

Getting to spend that weekend celebrating an engagement!

Meghan and Drew are getting married. How can we not love a man who popped the question on Tuesday night so we could spend the weekend celebrating?

After a fabulous Friday dinner out, we stayed in on Saturday night and made Zinfandel-Braised Beef Short Ribs with Rosemary-Parsnip Mashed Potatoes. Two thumbs up! And this is despite the fact I am currently down to only nine functional fingers, due to a slicing incident with the potato peeler. Fortunately, the girls jumped in and made this a true team effort.

The recipe is available at the link above, so I'm not going to type out the whole thing, due to the previously mentioned digital impairment, but here are the highlights.

We only had one big pot, so we made the potatoes first (omitting the parsnips) and whipped them with Meghan's immersion blender.

Fresh rosemary went into both the potatoes and the beef.

The short ribs get salted and peppered before they're seared in the pot.

We divided and conquered. Scotty chopped and peeled the parsnips while I seared the beef.

Hilary helped chop the onions. Once the beef is seared, it's set aside, and the onions go into the pot to soften.

Next we added the parsnips. (We left the parsnips out of the potatoes only because we didn't buy enough for both the stew and the mash, as prescribed in the recipe, and we didn't want to return to the supermarket.)

Add the garlic, rosemary, wine and broth, deglaze the pan, return the ribs to the pot, cover, and it all goes into the oven to bake for 2.5 hours.

With dinner in the oven, we amused ourselves by taking some photos...

Then one of us (ahem) drank entirely too much wine and thus forgot to take more than one photo of the finished product. We also almost forgot about the parsnips at the bottom of the pot. Nevertheless, here you go.