Photos: Passport & Plate - Sweet Smoked Ribs

tomforroti — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 08:42:00 GMT

Ingredients
1 rack of baby back pork ribs
For the dry rub:
2 tsp Pimenton de la Vera Sweet Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp Ground Cumin
pinch Allspice
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/2 tsp Garlic Salt
pinch Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp Muscavado Sugar

Sauce:-
Good quality beef stock
Ketchup
1 sweet onion (minced)
Runny honey
Liquid smoke
Full-bodied porter
Reserved dry rub
Caramelised onion chutney

How to prepare this recipe
Preheat oven to 160c (140c fan).
Rub half of the dry rub into the rack of ribs. Get a good coating.
Pour enough beef stock to cover ribs, cover tray with foil and place in the oven for 2 hours, turning halfway through. They should be tender but not fall-apart (yet).

Make the sauce by sweating onion in coconut oil. Cook until onions caramelise.
Pour in a ladle of beef stock and 1/2 cup of porter. Bring to a boil.
Quickly stir in 1 cup of ketchup, 1 tsp chutney, 2 tbsp of runny honey, 2 drops of liquid smoke and the leftover dry rub. Mix well.
Take off the boil and let it simmer until it thickens to half its volume.

~*~
When the ribs are done, drain the liquid and pat dry. Marinade in half of your sauce and chill for 24 hours.
To reheat, cook the ribs in the oven for 20 mins at 160c, pouring over the remainder of the sauce for the final 10 mins of cooking.
Alternatively, throw the rack onto a hot barbecue and give it 10 minutes each side, basting with sauce regularly.
When heated through, serve up with oven-baked sweet potato wedges and corn on the cob dusted with smoked paprika. Warm up any remaining BBQ sauce and pour over the rack.

The story behind this recipe
When I was young, my family took me to The Lazy Flamingo on Sanibel Island, Florida. It's one of my earliest food memories; getting called up to the counter becuase the order was ready and weaving your way through whoever was perched at the bar to get it. It was my first experience with ribs, and my first experience with homemade BBQ sauce. The tang and the smoke flavour combined with the syrupy velvet coating of sweetness on the tongue laps at my palette to this day.

I have since grown up (I like to think so) and worked in a number of kitchens. I've seen quite a lot in my culinary journey; from growing my own produce out back and serving it up in the restaurant to working a 120-seater restaurant in a rare 9 to 5 chef job where I could cook whatever I wanted, yet for some reason was junior to a head chef who only used gravy granules in the beef & ale pie. There has never been a demand for an authentic American BBQ sauce from my clientelle.

Experiments with various concoctions have proven fruitful and fruitless. Is it best to use the sharper sauces from St Louis or the smoke of the Texan effort? I've always remembered the mix of flavours in that Sanibel sauce, and I've finally cracked it - it's all in the sweet smoked Pimenton de la Vera paprika. I discovered the earthy, rusted angel dust in 2014. I use runny honey because molasses are harder to come by. I like minced onion, but I'm also fine with chunky dice for texture if the mood calls for it. I like a spoon of chutney and I like a whole lot of ketchup. I really like ketchup.

I think back to a grubby-faced 7-year old licking his sticky BBQ lips and how nearly 20 years later I'm still happy to accept the inevitable rib side effects of sauce under the fingernails and strands of buttery meat stuck in that one part of your teeth neither brush nor floss wants to reach. I'm at peace with coming full circle, and I wonder what other new flavours I can perfect 20 years down the line.

Tom's Sri Lankan Roti Series

Photos: Passport & Plate - Sweet Smoked Ribs