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Oven-baked spare ribs with Kalkwijck Rogge Genever 3 jaar oud

Out of the oven come spareribs that lay for two hours in foil at 140 degrees and were then finished for another three quarters of an hour with a reduced sauce of dark syrup, grated apple, apple juice, fennel seed, ketchup and apple cider vinegar. Opposite stands a rye jenever from Vroomshoop, three years old, distilled from rye grown on its own land.

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From the shelf

The bottle

Kalkwijck Rogge Genever 3 jaar oud comes from Kalkwijck Distillers in Vroomshoop, in Overijssel. It is a rye genever of 40% vol in a 70 cl bottle, three years old, craft-distilled from rye grown on the fields near the grain distillery itself; the description calls it a smooth rye genever. It does not give a precise malt wine share. For the designation jenever the law requires at least 30% vol and at least 1.5% alcohol from malt wine; at 40% vol this bottle is well above that.

Kalkwijck Rogge Genever 3 jaar oud

The combination

Why this works together

Spare ribs with this sauce are sweet at heart: 225 grams of treacle, a hundred grams of soft brown sugar, apple juice and ketchup put a thick, sticky layer on the meat, with apple cider vinegar and chipotle as a counterweight. A korenwijn would add yet another layer of sweetness with its grain sweetness and make the whole thing heavy. Rye does exactly the opposite: it is a peppery, dry grain in genever terms, and that spicy dryness cuts through the syrup glaze just as the vinegar in the sauce does. The fennel seed in the sauce finds a direct counterpart in the aniseed side of rye. The three years of ageing have added enough roundness to stand next to the fatty pork, and at 40% ABV there is plenty of alcohol to lift the glaze from the palate.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 30 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating and 2 hours 45 minutes in the oven
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 2 kg plain spare ribs
  • 225 g cooking syrup
  • 2 teaspoons crushed garlic
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 3 tablespoons chipotle sauce
  • 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 apple, for example Elstar
  • 300 ml cloudy apple juice
  • 1 tablespoon ground fennel seed
  • 150 ml tomato ketchup
  • 150 ml apple cider vinegar
  • 100 g soft brown sugar
  • aluminium foil

How to make it

  1. Loosen the membrane on the underside of the ribs from the bone and pull it off in one movement.
  2. Mix 75 g of the syrup with half of the garlic powder and the onion powder and with a third of the chipotle sauce and the Worcestershire sauce. Brush the ribs with this and leave them in the fridge for 2 to 24 hours.
  3. Preheat the oven to 140 °C.
  4. Grate the peeled apple and put it in a pan with the apple juice, fennel seed, ketchup, vinegar, soft brown sugar and the remaining chipotle sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder and syrup. Let the sauce simmer gently for 1.5 hours until thick, stirring regularly, and then let it cool to room temperature.
  5. Wrap each rack of ribs loosely in aluminium foil and bake them for 2 hours in the oven.
  6. Remove the foil, brush the ribs with half of the sauce and put them back in the oven, meat side up, for another 30 to 45 minutes.
  7. Serve with the remaining sauce on the side.

In the glass

Serving

Pour the Kalkwijck Rogge Genever at room temperature into a tulip glass, filled to the rim. At three years of ageing it is about the roundness and the spiciness that the cask and the rye produce together, and those need warmth. Chilled, the peppery rye note is shut down, and that is exactly the note that has to cut through the syrup here. A small glass beside the plate is enough.

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