Remembering Last Summer: Rack of Beef Ribs
Reflecting back on some of the dishes I’ve done this year, I thought this one was worth writing about. I saw a post somewhere, some time long ago, where someone – rather than cooking as short ribs, and cooked a rack of these ribs all as one. It looked insanely awesome, and I thought, well, I’ve got to have a go at this.
So I said to my butcher (Harrison’s Butchers in Leigh on Sea, if you’re a local) that I was after this rack, which he got me in specially. Now he said to me, “How much of this do you want?” – well, this is me, I want all of it.
It was a big bit of meat.
The thing is – whilst it looked huge, I did think there was going to be a lot of wastage, with bone and fat. So I wasn’t too worried. And worst case, if we had a load of meat left over, that’s just dinner another night.
So I also fancied doing something different. In my head, for the end result, I wanted this really tender, smokey, curry beef rib meat. From the butchers, I picked up this:
I’d used it on a couple of other bits of meat and it was super tasty. So, I covered the meat in it, and let it marinade for 24 hours:
Next, I wanted to smoke it – real low ‘n slow. I made a mistake I’ve made a few times, which is starting it too late. I need to invest in one of the fans like a BBQ Guru or something, so I could start it the night before. Anyway… On it went…
It smoked/cooked for about 6 hours at about 120c – and unfortunately the internal temp at that point was only 85c. It had another, roughly, 10 degrees to go – but was never going to make it in time for dinner (especially if I wanted to allow resting time).
I took a look…
That looks pretty good. But… I’ll point it out here, because I didn’t realise this was a mistake until we tried to eat it and you can see it here. That top layer of skin, I should have removed that – because the only thing that would cut it was my sharp carving knives etc, as for chewing it – forget it. Was totally inedible, and that also prevented a lot of flavour permeating through, I think. Bah.
So anyway, at this stage I was unaware. I thought I’d try and marinate it a little more whilst I whacked it in the oven, so through over some curry sauce. I won’t traumatise you with the photo of that, it did not look very nice. That said, Once I’d chucked it in the oven at a higher temp to try and finish it off, it was looking good:
The bones simply fell off, which was nice, then I had the disaster with the skin on top, but eventually managed to get it to a state where I could slice it. Served with some ‘fake rice’ (low carb… but frankly would not recommend…) this was really tasty beef. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was really tasty.
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