Recommendations · Wine and food

Oven-baked spare ribs with L’Avenir Horizon Pinotage

Spareribs that first cook slowly in the oven and then caramelise under a sauce of tomato, mustard and brown sugar. Pinotage is the South African grape that belongs with the braai, and that is no coincidence here.

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Bottle of L’Avenir Horizon Pinotage, wine

From the shelf

The bottle

L’Avenir Horizon Pinotage comes from South Africa and is made from pinotage. The wine is at 13.5 percent by volume and stands on our shelf under the heading fruity and soft. Pinotage is a cross between pinot noir and cinsault and generally gives dark fruit with a smoky edge.

Order in the online shopL’Avenir Horizon Pinotage

The combination

Why this works together

The barbecue sauce brings three things that are hard for a wine to handle: sweet, sour and smoke. Sweetness flattens a wine with a lot of tannin and makes it taste bitter, so a heavy, astringent red is out. This pinotage has soft tannins and plenty of ripe fruit, and that fruit sits alongside the sweet sauce instead of against it. The grape’s smoky edge also ties in with the caramelised outside of the ribs.

At the table

The dish

  • Before 4 people
  • Ready in 3 hours
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 2 racks of spare ribs of about 800 grams each
  • 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 tablespoon light brown soft sugar for the rub
  • 200 millilitres passata or sieved tomatoes
  • 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons of light brown soft sugar for the sauce
  • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika powder for the sauce
  • 300 millilitres of apple juice
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

How to make it

  1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees.
  2. Remove the membrane from the bone side of the ribs. Slide a butter knife under the membrane at the end, grip it with a piece of kitchen paper and pull it off in one go.
  3. Mix the rub: paprika powder, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, the tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt and pepper. Rub the ribs with it on both sides.
  4. Lay the strips in a roasting tin, pour in the apple juice and cover the tin tightly with aluminium foil.
  5. Put the roasting tin in the oven for two hours. The ribs are done when the meat clearly tears between the bones as you bend the strip.
  6. Meanwhile make the sauce: put the passata, vinegar, the two tablespoons of sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and paprika powder in a saucepan. Simmer gently for ten minutes to a syrupy sauce and season to taste.
  7. Remove the foil and set the oven to 220 degrees.
  8. Brush the ribs generously with the sauce and put them back in the oven for ten minutes. Brush once more and give them another five to eight minutes, until the sauce is sticky and here and there dark in colour.
  9. Let the strips rest for five minutes and then cut them between the bones.

In the glass

Serving

Pour the wine at 15 to 16 degrees into a red wine glass. With a sweet, smoky sauce a red wine works better when it is on the fresh side; too warm and the fruit goes flat. A quarter of an hour in the glass is enough; letting it breathe is not necessary.

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