I think this recipe from Jamie’s America officially counts as cheating, as it’s barbeque ribs cooked in the oven. Given that I don’t have a barbeque yet (will remedy that in the end of season sales this year) and the fact that the weather is rubbish, I can live with the oven. If you can’t, you may want to skip this one.

First, take a rack of beef ribs. The recipe calls for a four rib rack, but I’m cutting the recipe in half for us.

This is an unattractive hunk o’ meat, fatty and bony. This is my first time cooking beef ribs in any form and I’m not at all surprised by the long cooking time called for. I imagine these are either delicious and tender or like old boot leather, with not much in the middle.

As it turns out, my giant lump of cow was actually two – it naturally came apart in the middle and was clearly always two bits. Not sure how that’ll pan out, it that’s all part of the experiment now!

First, both lumps got coated liberally in American style mustard – I used French’s brand, as it’s pretty easy to get here these days, and the leftovers will happily get used on hot dogs. Mmmmhot dogs…

The mustard thing seems weird, and I would have thought it completely made up if I hadn’t been watching some documentaries on Netflix lately about barbeque, and seeing the gallon containers of French’s being smeared over whole sides of beef ribs before they went in the smoker.

Once everything is mustardy, on goes a rub made of smoked paprika, chilli powder (again, I used old bay here, which is quite common in barbeque cooking), salt, black pepper and vegetable oil. Trying to get the rub on over the mustard was messy and a little slippery – you just have to roll up the sleeves and dive in here. There’s just no point in trying to avoid getting goo on your more to scratch your nose before you start. Murphy’s law and all of that.

While that cooks in a low oven, it’s time to crack on with what’s called a marinade, but is basically mop sauce. This involves stock, vinegar, honey, butter and smoked paprika and gets liberally doused over the meat towards the end of cooking time, then it’s wrapped in foil to keep the juices in.

Just when you think it’ll never be time to eat it, despite hours of delicious roasty smells, you end up with this.

I popped it off the bone and sliced, anod served with Mac and cheese and corn – my favorite bbq sides.

This was really delicious, tender and tasty. That said, I’m not sure if I’ll make it again. It’s quite an expensive chunk of meat, mainly due to the giant bones weighing a lot, proportionately. We could have had two big rib eyes or strip loins for the price. I wouldn’t like to be making it for a crowd! The active cooking time is under an hour, but bear in mind I started working on this at 11am, and we ate around 8pm. Not complicated, but very time intensive.

If someone else wants to cook it and invite me over though, I’ll bring the sides.