The roaring forties are strong westerly winds that bring wild weather to southern Australia. As it turns out, they also blow across a region of Tasmania known for particularly tasty lamb.
Shayne McCallum of Melbourne barbeque joint Up in Smoke swears by it. When tasked with creating a recipe using Bull’s-Eye Original BBQ sauce, McCallum chose to showcase lamb ribs.
“We buy a lot of meat from Flinders + Co, and this is a new Tasmanian lamb that they're calling ‘Roaring Forties’–it's really very good,” he says.
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SIGN UP“The Bull’s-Eye sauce has fantastic consistency, which was perfect for sticking to the smoked lamb ribs. The big smoky flavour and its sweetness are the reasons why we wanted to use it.”
If you visit Up in Smoke before November 20, you can try the limited-edition lamb dish yourself. In the meantime, here are some of McCallum’s tips on glazing the perfect lamb rib.
Don’t go overboard
McCallum quickly decided that the new lamb would make the perfect vessel for his choice of Bull’s Eye sauce, which is the brand’s original barbeque sauce.
“We're doing two things with the sauce,” he explains. “The first thing is that we use [it] as a kind of marinade: we rub it onto the raw meat so that the salt and pepper will stay on it. It caramelises nicely. You have to use a very light coating – too much and it might go too dark or burn – but it works well."
Flash fry
At this point McCallum lets us in on a bit of a secret: flash frying. If you wouldn’t have thought of frying lamb ribs, you’re not alone, but as McCallum explains, there’s one simple reason for this particular trick of the trade. “What it does is create a very mild crust on [the lamb]. The outside of the rib has a bit of a crust anyway from the smoking, but the flash frying creates more of a crust around the entire piece. It makes the dish more textural – you get a mild crunch.”
“With lamb ribs it's quite popular.”
Balance it out
Once the ribs are prepared, they’re coated again in Bull’s-Eye Original BBQ sauce (“The surface of the fried ribs are the perfect vehicle for the BBQ sauce to stick to”) and plated up with salad, smoked almonds and Up in Smoke’s own house-pickled onions. “The almonds are a nice touch. Along with some fresh parsley, they cut through the fattiness of the meat.”
The parsley comes in the “green goddess” sauce, which embellishes a basic salad dressing — oil, vinegar, garlic, seasoning — with yogurt and a bunch of, well, green things: specifically, avocado, parsley and basil. “Ours also has jalapenos,” says McCallum.
The result is a dish that lets simple ingredients shine: good meat, good salad and good sauce. “Yeah, look, we're a pretty simple joint,” McCallum says. “[We specialise in] smoked meats on a tray, sandwiches and beer.”
The Roaring Forties lamb dish will be available at Up in Smoke from October 23 to November 20.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Bull’s-Eye BBQ Sauce.