You can’t beat a relaxed summer’s day *BBQ with friends and family, especially if you serve these delicious pork or beef ribs with a homemade BBQ spice rub and sticky sauce. This is perfect with beef short ribs or, if you choose pork, ask your butcher to sell you the ribs in a whole rack – it keeps the meat moister and you can cut them up at the end of the cooking process.
Spice rub
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 3 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 2 teaspoons chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon each of fennel and cumin seeds, coarsely crushed
2 x 800g pork ribs, each with 8 rib bones about 5cm long or 4 large beef short ribs.
BBQ sauce
- 2 tablespoons dark brown molasses sugar
- 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 150g tomato ketchup
- 2 teaspoons mustard powder
- 1.5 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
- 3 cloves of crushed garlic or 3 teaspoons of roasted garlic paste
- 1 teaspoon of runny honey
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon of sea salt
- 3 drops of Tabasco
To make…
- Thoroughly combine the spices and herbs for the dry rub in a bowl. Rub the mix all over the ribs and leave overnight. Cover, refrigerate, and take them out an hour before you want to cook them.
- To cook, wrap the ribs in baking parchment (sprinkle over any loose dry rub spices so as not to waste them) and then wrap them tightly in foil to make a parcel. Preheat the BBQ hotplate to low. Set the ribs on a rack and the rack on the hotplate and cook for an hour and a half. Turn them so that the ribs cook in the steam. You could also do this part in the oven ahead of time at 150°C.
- Meanwhile, mix all the BBQ ingredients together in a ceramic bowl.
- Unwrap the cooked ribs, and put them on the BBQ hotplate. Brush the ribs with the sauce, turn with a pair of tongs. Repeat the process for about 15 to 20 minutes until all the sauce has been used and the ribs are tender.
- Remove to a warm plate, cover with foil and leave to rest for 10 minutes before serving.
*This recipe was originally published in the WOW24/7 section of The Bury Free Press for my Pigeon Cottage cookery column.
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