A few weeks ago Dave and I spent a very merry (ahem) Friday evening down at Averys Wine Merchants in Bristol with field&flower, an online butcher shop delivering high quality, traceable meat, charcuterie, fish and dairy all over the UK. Their event at Avery’s was to celebrate their local customer base by treating them to an evening of great food, wine pairing and (squeamish folk and vegetarians, look away now) a lamb butchery demonstration. We somehow blagged a ticket and really enjoyed learning more about this fantastic business which is run by best buddies James Mansfield and fifth-generation farmer James Flower.
What struck me, having been to plenty of events like this, was just how enthusiastic and genuine the two James’ seemed. You could feel their passion and it was infectious. It might have been the wine too but by the end of the evening (and the highest-brow meat raffle I’ll ever attend) people were literally whooping their way out the building.
Following that evening, field&flower kindly sent me a meat box to try at home. It arrived well packed in fully recyclable packaging and the accompanying note told me everything I needed to know; from the name of the farm and breed of each animal through to its slaughter date. I was delighted to see that as well as chicken, lamb, Longman’s butter (my favourite) and onion marmalade, it also included a pack of beef short ribs!
We bounced into the weekend with glee, knowing that we’d be eating those beef short ribs. And oh boy did we eat them. If we could, we’d have eaten the bones they were THAT good.
I decided to follow a honey glazed short ribs recipe from the field+flower website. Take a look at the original recipe here or scroll down to see it now:
Ingredients (serves 4… ahem)
- 1.5 kg beef short ribs
- A few knobs of butter
- Cracked black pepper
- Sea salt
- 1 sliced red onion
- A good squeeze of honey
- 1 bunch of chopped parsley
- 1 pack of Button mushrooms
Method
- Preheat oven 120 degrees fan
- Remove the ribs from their packaging and dab dry
- Place them on a plate and allow to reach room temp (approx 30 mins)
- Rub the ribs with butter, season thoroughly
- Place ribs and chopped red onion in a deep roasting tin in the bottom of the oven for 2.5 hours
- Turn halfway through cooking
- After 2.5 hours drizzle runny honey on top of the ribs (the ribs should be showing by now).
- Turn up the heat to crisp for final 20 minutes.
- Rest for 30 minutes and serve on the bone with plenty of napkins! Delicious!
- Serve with sautéed mushrooms with butter & parsley. I also added roasted new potatoes and garlic because we’re greedy.
Tip: These honey glazed short ribs produce a lot of fat so drain it and save as beef dripping for roasties!
