Food
I’m from a beef and sheep farming background, so I’m well aware that if you start with the best-quality ingredients, treat them well and keep it simple, you can’t go wrong. I never hold back on seasoning and I love butter and olive oil.
Drinks
At the moment, I’m really enjoying Moa’s South Pacific Pale Ale. Our concept for Miss Moonshine’s is meat, beer and fire – no bullshit. We serve half a dozen small New Zealand craft beers and change it up quite often.
Tunes
Reggae to start off with (it brings the sun out!) and then funk, upbeat old-school jams and a bit of pop later on.
Style
A barbecue is all about getting people around a table and creating a bit of community. Long tables are perfect for letting your hair down and getting a little rowdy. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, so the unsealed floors at Miss Moonshine’s mean any spill just adds to the character. We have an Owen Dippie mural on the wall called Angus; this is our tribute to New Zealand’s finest. We’re pretty rough and ready here; as long as all our mates are around the table, it’s all good.
Try Ryan’s can-do chook.
The do’s and don’ts of great barbecuing
DO
• Buy free-range meat.
• Have a clean-burning fire: a clean-tasting, sweet barbecue comes down to good oxygen flow and quality wood or charcoal.
• Always bring meat to room temperature.
• Give meat plenty of time to rest, no matter how keen you are to dig in.
• Make barbecuing a tradition – setting aside a day allows you time to engage and chill with family and friends.
DON’T
• Rush it; we are talking low ’n’ slow.
• Over-clean the grill; the barbecue needs to have a bit of flavour to impart
to the meat.
• Be tempted to choke the fire to decrease heat; let it burn down naturally.
• Worry about cutlery – barbecued meat begs to be eaten with your fingers.
Can there be too much smoke?
Treat smoke like you do any other ingredient. It shouldn’t be the absolute focal point of any dish; it’s there to enhance beautiful meat. Just as you add salt sparingly to a dish, so you should add smoke. There’s nothing worse than acrid, over-smoked, bitter-tasting meat.
Try Ryan’s beef short ribs with smoked-bone sauce.
How do I choose great-quality beef?
When you consider our abundance of pasture-fed meat, we have pretty amazing quality in New Zealand. Quality beef should have a dark crimson tone. Well-cared-for meat will be aged and look a little drier compared to fresh, which is bright and glossy. Well-butchered beef has a nice, even fat cap and beautiful marbling throughout the grain. Fat means flavour so you definitely need some on the cut.
My favourite cut has always been sirloin. It’s such an amazing-tasting, full-flavoured piece of meat, with great texture. I love the fatty piece that hangs off down the end. Lately, I’m crazy about whole-aged sirloin on the bone. But through the low ’n’ slow technique we can also enjoy all the cheap cuts that are full of flavour. Kiwi-style barbecuing has often been about charring the life out of meat and sausages on a gas grill, but the low ’n’ slow approach changes all that.
This was first published in Taste magazine.
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