Monday, October 01, 2007

Barbecue marinade for spare ribs

Here is another marinade for spare ribs, this time for four people. (You want three or four ribs for each person, I think.) Four tbsps of tomato ketchup; 2 cloves of garlic, crushed with salt; 1 tbsp of groundnut oil; 1 dstsp of rice vinegar; 1 tsp of soy sauce; 1 tsp of nam pla (fish sauce); 1 star anise, chopped up a bit; salt and pepper. Spread this marinade over the joint of ribs, and roast it for two hours at gas mark 1/130 C. (Another marinade is here.)

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall included a spare rib recipe in his Guardian column on Saturday. The marinade looked interesting. But I prefer to cook the meat at a lower temperature than the one he recommended (gas mark 4/180 C for 45 minutes in a dish covered with foil, and then uncovered for 20 minutes). The steam inside the foil will cook the ribs so efficiently that it may dry them out; and 20 minutes' exposure may be enough to burn the honey and soy in the marinade. In the accompanying picture, the ribs were blackened, in a way that food stylists think appetising but that should, as I have written before, put you off.

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