Honey and Mustard Pork Ribs

Honey & Mustard Pork Ribs (served with warm potato salad)

There are two fundamental reasons why pork ribs taste so great. First, their relatively high fat content bastes and flavours the meat as it braais, and secondly, the high bone-to-meat ratio means that the bones impart further flavour to the meat as they heat up during the braai. Pork ribs taste great, but the marinades and sauces they usually come packaged in burn easily. So, there are two things that can go wrong when you braai them:

You remove them from the fire when you think the marinade is starting to burn, but the inside is still raw.
You braai them until the inside is cooked through, but by that stage the marinade is burnt.

To solve these problems and serve perfect pork ribs is to braai first and marinate later!

Don’t marinate or baste the uncooked ribs – just buy a rack of regular, unmarinated baby back pork ribs or spare ribs. Season the ribs with a bit of salt and pepper and braai them until almost done. Remove from the coals, then slice the rack into individual riblets. Smother them in the sauce, then return to the fire and finish braaing. This way, the ribs will be properly cooked through and the sauce will be nicely glazed without being burnt.

There are many inferior off-the-shelf commercial sauces in the world which are so-called ‘honey and mustard’ in flavour, but this sauce actually consists of honey and mustard. Honey adds a unique flavour to this recipe, but you could substitute it with golden syrup.

Baby back ribs are the smaller, neater ones and spare ribs are the chunkier ones of substance, use whichever you prefer. ‘St Louis’ ribs are spare ribs with some good bits trimmed away so this cut of ribs can be avoided.

WHAT YOU NEED

(Feeds 4)

1.5 kg pork spare ribs
salt and pepper

For the Sauce

½ cup honey
2 tots dijon mustard
2 tots wholegrain mustard
1 tot olive oil
1 tsp salt

WHAT TO DO

Prepare the sauce: Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a bowl. If you want to simplify matters and just want to use one type of mustard, go ahead and just double its quantity.
Braai the ribs: Season the rack of ribs with salt and pepper. Braai the whole rack of spare ribs over medium heat, turning regularly, for 30 minutes until almost done.
Remove the ribs from the fire and place on a cutting board. Cut into single riblets.
Toss the ribs into the sauce bowl and coat them well. Use a spoon to toss them or shake the bowl around. I like a round bottomed stainless steel bowl for this job. Leave for a few minutes to allow the exposed, meaty parts of the ribs to bond with and absorb the sauce.
Braai the now generously basted ribs for between 2 and 10 minutes until all the sauce is warm and glazed. If during the cutting you saw that the ribs were basically done and will start to dry out, just braai them for a minute or so until the sauce is glazed, but if you saw they still had a way to go, make it closer to 10 minutes or even longer. Also face the two recently cut sides of each rib coal-side down.

warm potato salad

Warm, sweet, sour and savoury – this is not the traditional mayonnaise-based potato salad, but it goes well with any braai meat, especially pork.

WHAT YOU NEED

(Feeds 4)

500 g potatoes
1 onion
100 g bacon
2 garlic cloves
2 tots olive oil
2 tots white grape vinegar
1 tot mustard
1 tot sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

WHAT TO DO

Life is too short to peel potatoes. Boil the potatoes until completely cooked and soft but not falling apart, we’re not making mash. This takes about 20 minutes. During this time also move on to the next step and make the sauce.
Chop the onion and bacon. I know bacon only comes in 200 g packs. Use the rest for breakfast tomorrow. Crush and chop the garlic. Fry the onion and bacon dry to force its hand to start browning. Add the oil, continue to fry and when you feel the time is right, add the garlic. As the garlic goes golden but before it burns, proceed to the next step.
Add the vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt and pepper. Stir and use the vinegar to scrape loose any sticky bits from the bottom of the pan. Once the sugar has melted and dissolved into the sauce, turn down the heat.
As soon as the potatoes are cooked and you can stick a fork into them, drain off the water. Whilst still warm, slice the potatoes into disks or cube them and throw into the pan with the sauce. Toss so that all the potatoes are covered with sauce, and then serve.