Sticky spare ribs

The summer has thrown up a lot of new sporting heroes, including the Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova, the Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy and the 19-year-old American swimmer Michael Phelps. But only one has continually set off my craving for spare ribs.

The cricketing all-rounder Andrew “Freddy” Flintoff is about as far from being a Fred Flintstone as you can be, but every time his name wafted out from the television during the last Test, all I could think of were the brontosaurus ribs that Wilma used to cook for Fred in their suburban cave. This soon segued into a need to eat the modern equivalent: sticky pork spare ribs doused in Chinese hoi sin sauce.

Spare ribs come from the lower ribcage of the pig, and don’t carry a lot of meat on their bones. This means that the cook has to get a lot of flavour in there fast, and the eater has to pick them up in sticky fingers and gnaw away like a dog with a bone.

Enter hoi sin, a rich, thick, highly flavoured Chinese sauce made from yellow beans, vinegar, sugar, chilli, garlic, sesame oil and spices, available in jars or bottles from supermarkets. It is most commonly used with roast suckling pig, and often served as a condiment with roast duck.

The ribs can be cooked on a medium-heat barbecue for about 20 minutes, but it is easier to control the temperature in an oven to avoid burning. To turn them into a meal, serve with rice and steamed mangetout or broccoli.

Ingredients
Serves 4

Prep: 10 min + marinating
Cook: 40 min

1kg pork spare ribs, cut into individual ribs
250ml water for tray

Marinade:

2 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
150g hoi sin sauce
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tbsp Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
half tsp salt
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger

Dipping sauce:

2 tbsp hoi sin sauce
dash of sesame oil
1 tbsp Thai sweet chilli sauce

METHOD: Combine the five spice, hoi sin sauce, ketchup, rice wine, salt and ginger in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the ribs and coat them thoroughly. Leave to stand in the marinade for between 30 and 60 minutes (or overnight), tossing occasionally.

Place the ribs on a wire rack set over a baking tray, and add 250ml water to the tray. Cook for 20 minutes at 230C/Gas 8, then turn the ribs over and cook at 200C/Gas 6 for 15 to 20 minutes.

Keep an eye on them; you want them scorched and sizzling but not burnt to a frazzle.

Make the dipping sauce and serve with the ribs, along with bowls of steamed rice tossed with finely chopped spring onions.