Ribs are a strange passion of mine – they’re messy, far from feminine and every time I order a rack of ribs people stare at me with what I’d like to think is a mixture of surprise and admiration. I’ve had many amazing rib meals but I’ve also had a fair share of mediocre ribs, one of which was at a certain local pub (quantity over quality) and another was my own forgettable first attempt.
My boyfriend got some really sound rib-cooking advice from a workmate who use to be a chef and I had been tormented by severe rib cravings for about a month before we finally cooked them last weekend.
We used pork spareribs, with a dry rub of pretty much everything I had in my spices drawer: dry mustard, paprika, chilli, nutmeg, allspice, salt and cracked pepper. I’m not sure why I put allspice or nutmeg in it but it turned out just fine.
I dry rubbed the ribs, cling filmed and refrigerated them until it was time for cooking.
The oven was preheated to about 225˚C (not fan-forced), which we found out later was probably a bit too high.
We lay down foil on an oven tray, filled the tray with water, placed a metal rack on the tray and then the ribs on top of the rack. We then covered it all with foil and placed it into the oven for 2 hours.
By that time the meat came off the bone really nicely so we started basting the ribs in a honey BBQ sauce – each side twice before we finished the cooking process. I have to admit that we technically cheated with the sauce because it came from a bottle but I guess that’s something to improve on for next time!
These were genuinely some of the nicest ribs I’ve had in a while and what made the experience even nicer was being able to go through the process with my partner. There’s definitely something incredibly attractive about a man who can cook!