Not-Ribs & Wings

Ribs & wings are a classic combo. One of my favourites especially if the wings are slathered in some chilli-infused hot sauce. I don’t care for the heat so much; but the flavours of really well done hot wings are… oooh just unbeatable.

The butchers I’d go to often did loads of pre-prepared meat. This was handy for when I was feeling super lazy or more likely – just really busy with work. I had a lot going on back then, and sometimes you needed an easy one.

That said, I’d pretty much ALWAYS do the wings myself, because nowhere have I found that dishes up wings spicy enough. These wings are marinating in hot chilli powder, hot smoked paprika, and I think that’s it!

So then the “Not ribs”. They basically sort of are pork belly ribs but they were done more as pork belly slices, that had bone in and – they had the rind on. Now, this is a good example of don’t always trust what you buy.

Here they are on the BBQ. You can see that layer of rind on the top, and the bones at the bottom. This is exactly how it came from the butcher. Two problems I have here is ribs need to be cooked low n slow, but if you do that with the rind on it just goes tough, chewy and inedible. If you cook it on a high heat – unless you get it crispy like pork crackling – which is really hard, it’s still really not very nice.

In the end I did stop buying them – or as I’d eat them would just take the rind off and not eat it – but in my opinion that’s a classic example of the butcher not eating their own cuts of meat / not thinking ahead!

Anyway, once the wings had been on a for a bit, I started basting them with an extra-hot Nandos sauce (as they’d started supplying supermarks with their proper sauce from the restaurants – something I’d missed a LOT).

I let them crisp up a bit, then took them off and they were ready to eat, and they were delish – too spicy for the kids – but they’re not mad about stuff on the bone anyway – so all the more for me!