Rib Hunt

About 2:00 pm yesterday I realised that there wasn’t any (desirable) food in the pantry, fridge or freezer for dinner. I was forced to stop reading the Sunday Star-Times and think about what I wanted to cook for tea. My first thought was to make teriyaki glazed salmon with steamed rice and bok choy but everybody knows that it is stupid to buy seafood on a Sunday. And I can confirm that this is not an old wives tale because I used to work at a supermarket seafood counter. So I went back to the drawing board. Then I remembered talking to the guy from Uncle Vern’s BBQ Sauce at the Dunkley’s Craft Show and realised that ribs would be perfect. My decision was final… I wanted BBQ pork ribs.

It was a lovely day outside. If I wasn’t home alone it probably would have been a nice enough day to pull out the BBQ for the first time since I have been back. I decided to roller-blade to the butcher instead of being a lazy bum and taking the car. And off I went. I would definitely roller-blade more places if it wasn’t so darn difficult to stop. I’m also a scaredy-pants and don’t want to trip over a branch and go flying or anything crazy like that. Luckily all the footpaths around our house are nice and smooth and pretty wide in most places so I can go fast. The first butcher I tried was closed. The second butcher I tried was closed. My last ditch resort was The Mad Butcher. Thankfully, it was open. I searched around the shop looking for a nice juicy rack of pork ribs but there were none in sight. Then I discovered that they had ribs that were already cut up. The only problem was that they only seemed to come in ginormous size packages. I also found some lamb ribs but I knew they wouldn’t be quite right. Right when I was about to give up and get a steak, I found the only small pack of ribs in the entire store and nabbed them. Woohoo.

I raced home to get started with the slow cooking process. My only detour was a brief stop at The Funky Pumpkin fruit and vege store where I found some yummy blood oranges and couldn’t resist buying a couple. I decided to try a new method for cooking the ribs… I simmered them in beer and water for a couple of hours before finishing them off in the oven with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce (the best sauce in the whole of the US). They were fallin’ off the bone tender and absolutely delicious. I’m glad I went on a rib hunt.