Short Ribs, as Easy as 1-2-3

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again:

I love making beef short ribs because they take only about one brain cell's worth of energy. You plop them in some wonderful liquid, let them cook for a couple of hours, then serve. Or you can wait a day. They're even better after they sit in the refrigerator overnight.

What's really fun is to make short ribs using a recipe that calls for a few ingredients, one of them certain to astound your guests: prune juice.

Yes, my favorite no-brainer short ribs recipe contains prune juice. It's a trick I learned 10 years ago from New York chef Rozanne Gold's first cookbook, "Recipes 1-2-3."

Combine a cup of teriyaki sauce (any prepared sauce will do) with a cup of prune juice and marinate the short ribs overnight. The next day, you add some water and black pepper and simmer the ribs for two hours. The dark, spicy marinade-turned-sauce is cooked to thicken it before it's poured over the velvety, tender meat.

Serve the short ribs with buttered noodles (Gold likes big, broad noodles like pappardelle tossed with a little butter and rosemary) and a salad, and friends and family will consider you a bloody genius. Just for fun -- and after they've licked their plates clean -- ask them to guess what was in the sauce. Boy, will they be surprised.

Mahogany Short Ribs

4 servings

The prune juice tenderizes the marbled ribs of beef, while the teriyaki sauce adds sweetness and salt. If you're serving wine, a California zinfandel makes a perfect match. Adapted from "Recipes 1-2-3," by Rozanne Gold (Viking, 1996).

3 pounds bone-in or boneless beef short ribs, cut into 4 pieces

1 cup teriyaki sauce

1 cup prune juice