Happy New Year to you all!
While you were all probably sleeping off the effects of the new year celebrations, we decided to get in the first ribs of the year!
Spurred on a little by the surprise delivery of Raichlen's Barbecue Bible for Christmas (the rest of our barbecue library is still buried in one of 80-odd boxes littering our place at the moment - once we find somewhere of our own they'll be given their rightful place...) we chose a recipe. We tried a new butcher's for our rib supply - a local farm shop that deals in all sorts of meat and game:
Mrs F and I thought we had it sussed, and asked for a full draft as we'd been told before. When we got it home though, we found that there was a little more than expected, we had all the ribs plus the belly pork still attached - that'll explain why one rack weighed more than 7lbs! A quick home butchering job and we now have some frozen belly pork for the future and a more reasonable rack of ribs. One day I swear we'll get a proper rack of ribs straight from the butcher, that or I'll have to retrain!
We prepared the ribs as usual and followed Raichlen's Rasta Ribs recipe. This started with a 4 hour soak of the ribs in dark rum, followed by applying the rub for an hour or so before cooking.
I'm still on gas as along with the barbecue library, the Santa Fe is in another box somewhere in the garage, so apologies to the purists. On opening the grill to get it warming, I got a bit of a surprise and reminder of how much wetter it is over here, my grill had gone a little greeny-blue and furry! A hurried cleasing and liberal dosing of disinfectant followed by flaming and we were set to go.
The ribs were cooked over an indirect medium heat for about 2 1/2 hours (with a water pan to add moisture) and wrapped in foil for the last 15min or so, rested, sliced and devoured. These were really good - Mrs F grunted her approval from the first mouthful to the last.
The rub gave a light spice and herb flavour without being overpowering, and the rum came through at the end. These were quite different from the usual barbecue flavour as there was no paprika in the rub, so a successful start to the year. Hopefully it'll continue like this, and you never know, by 2009 we may have managed to source some grill-ready ribs and be cooking on charcoal...
