Cooking Braciole Pasta with Spare Ribs

Let's try an Italian-inspired dish. I'm cooking braciole pasta this time. I rarely do this as it takes a long time to cook. It's therefore best for special occasions with small gatherings.

Read on to get my personal recipe for this home-cooking meal.



Everybody Loves Raymond introduced me to braciole. However, it wasn't the very good cook Marie who propagated this dish. Rather, it was Debra, the one who can hardly cook a decent meal (not unless it was lemon chicken which was her specialty all across the series) whom I got the dish from. Braciole is Debra's one-time successful recipe which her husband Raymond really loved. Naturally, I got curious. I knew I had to learn this braciole dish, as well.

Braciole is a slow-cook Italian recipe for tomato-based beef rounds. I find it similar to a morcon which many Filipinos can relate to. My recipe however is not a meat-rolled dish. I'll be using spare ribs, instead. (It's easier.) This recipe is still a braciole-like dish though, since I'll be using very similar ingredients to the real Italian braciole.


Ingredients in cooking braciole pasta:
- pasta
- garlic, crushed and chopped
- onions cut into strips

- Shiitake mushrooms, cut into strips

- spare ribs
- parsley, chopped

- basil, chopped

- tomato sauce

- pecorino romano cheese or any quick-melt cheese, grated

- olive oil
- salt and pepper

Let's start cooking braciole pasta.
1. Pat the spare ribs dry with a paper towel.
2. Season the ribs with salt.
3. Using your hands, rub garlic and parsley unto the ribs.
4. Season this mixture with pepper.

5. Let it marinate for about 10 minutes.
6. Fry the ribs in olive oil.

7. When the ribs are cooked on both sides, add the onions. Stir well.

8. When the onions are cooked, transfer the dish to a deep pan with tomato sauce, basil and cheese.

To avoid to much oil, drain the spare ribs first.

9. Let this dish simmer under very low heat (the lowest possible) for 4-6 hours. Sit back and relax. Set a timer for it so you can do other things.

You'll know that the braciole is cooked when the meat is so soft and tenderized that it easily separates from the bones.

10. Cook the pasta when the braciole sauce is ready.

11. Mix the pasta with the sauce in a pan.
12. Serve with cheese. This dish also goes well with grilled chicken and asparagus soup.

There you go! Slow and easy. Nice and yummy, herb-y saucy pasta. Enjoy!

Here's another tomato-based pasta recipe - Pork Bolognese. This one's quick to cook. Nothing near 6 hours. :)

Remember me when you cook!