Pineapple-Grilled Short Ribs with Sweet and Salty Coconut Rice

I have never found it necessary to purchase short ribs. I have never, to my knowledge, eaten short ribs and I probably could have gone my entire life without ever tasting them (and being quite OK with it). That being said, I had no idea what a flanken short rib was and really had no idea what they looked like. Thankfully, the Kroger I went to had ONE package of short ribs that actually said "flanken short rib" on it and it was the amount I needed. It was fate - except really. 

She suggests a 12-24 hour marination period and after last night's extra crispy almost-disaster, I did just that. As a matter of fact, as soon as I wrapped up blogging last night I got to work on these bad boys. Because marinating is literally letting meat soak in various spices and liquids, there is really nothing to elaborate on there and I'll move on to more important things.

Marination Station

Important things like, for example, the sweet and salty coconut rice. Do ya'll remember way back when I started this blog and I said that I absolutely had to make the recipe as-is? Well, I'm sure ya'll have figured out by now that I really can't be trusted because I fucked up again today by not double checking that I had all the ingredients. Can you believe I ran out of sugar? SUGAR. I had everything else: jasmine rice, salt, coconut milk, coconut flakes but not a spoonful of granulated sugar was to be found in my pantry. I then remembered putting sugar on my whiteboard grocery list outside my pantry door, but this did not change the fact that today I was sugar-less. Lucky for me, she does not specify what kind of sugar you need for this. It simply says "sugar" and nothing else. So, I am NOT cheating when I say that I used dark brown sugar (because, what do you know, I was also out of light brown sugar). Hashtag winning.

Oh, here is where I should also probably mention that I have never made a pot of rice (that wasn't instant) that came out edible. I swear I have cooked before and I am good at 95% of it, but rice is my nemesis. It's like it can smell the fear as I'm following the directions to the letter. Every. Time. Once, I attempted a pot of brown rice and it came out so crunchy I wondered if I had blacked out at some point and forgot to add water. That one still remains a mystery, actually. 

So now that you know my history, understand that I was very nervous while making this and checked, doubled checked, and checked again to make sure that I was doing this correctly. When all was said and done and the lid came off the pot it looked...creamy. But not bad. It did not "fluff", but after a good stir and a little taste I was certain that this was the end of my rice-fuck-up streak. Guys, this was amazing. AMAZING. And that was with dark brown sugar. I can only imagine how good this would taste using granulated sugar. I wasn't even mad that Collin was taking forever getting the grill ready because it gave me more time to eat this. 

Kind of looks like oatmeal.

And because I'm so thrilled this didn't come out crunchy:

There's one with the book.

As you can see, this looks a bit like oatmeal and/or brown rice because of my sugar choice, but fear not. It is as delicious as you hope it will be. 

So once the grill was finally ready, I forced Collin to read the recipe to make sure these were done right because the man has never met a rib that cooked in under 8 hours. However, he did as he was told and a few minutes later we had dinner:

Yeah I gnawed on it a little before I realized I should probably take a picture.

To summarize: these two were fantastic. Collin asked me to keep the marinade recipe and we chowed down. This is one of the most satisfying meals I have had in a while so do yourself a favor and treat yo-self.