Every bank holiday, the country does the thing it does best: it panics about the weather, then packs a barbecue and pretends it’s a holiday. You know the one. The forecast says a 30% chance of rain, which in Britain is not a probability, it’s a direct threat. Someone has bought two bags of charcoal, a pack of corn on the cob, and a coleslaw that has been sitting in the fridge since last month’s garden party, waiting — like a good soldier, like a good excuse — for its moment.
We have a banker to thank for the day off, and I say that with respect. In 1871, Sir John Lubbock — a banker, a statesman, and a naturalist who was clearly doing just fine with his own weekends — introduced a bill giving England four set bank holidays. Royal assent came on 25 May, and the new days were so well liked that people started calling them “St Lubbock’s Days,” which is the polite version of “the man who stopped the country for a Monday.”
The August bank holiday — the big one, the barbecue one — started life on the first Monday in August and only later migrated to the last, where it sits now like a man who’s been pushed to the back of the queue and stopped complaining about it. In 1971 the whole arrangement got quietly rewritten into new legislation, which is how Britain does everything: keep the thing, change the paperwork, carry on.
Most of the country uses the day to flee. The exodus is a national event — the motorways turn into one slow, very opinionated line of cars heading for the coast or for a place where it’s legally 24 degrees. But there’s a second group: the ones who didn’t get the day off, the ones whose flight got bumped, the ones who looked at the cost of a package holiday and decided the garden was close enough. That’s you. You’re not having a holiday. You’re hosting a barbecue, it’s going to be brilliant, and it’s going to rain at 4pm.
A bank holiday barbecue is the British answer to the question “what do we do with a free Monday and a packet of charcoal?” The answer is: we stand in the garden in a t-shirt and hope. The recipe below is a proper one — beef ribs with a brown-sauce glaze, sausages, corn on the cob, chips and a coleslaw. The only thing missing is the weather, and that’s not an ingredient you can buy.
Ingredients
- Beef back ribs, about 2kg (or a beef rib joint, if you’re feeding the whole street)
- 8 thick pork sausages — the “proper” kind, not the cocktail kind
- 4 ears of sweetcorn (frozen is fine, it’s September, the season has left the building)
- 2 large potatoes, cut into chips (or a bag of pre-cut)
- 1 head of cabbage, shredded, plus 1 grated carrot
- Mayonnaise, for the coleslaw
- A splash of cider vinegar
- 1 jar of brown sauce — the British barbecue sauce, not the American red stuff
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- A couple of tablespoons of your favourite BBQ sauce, if you’re feeling a bit American
- 1 teaspoon of sugar or honey, to stop the glaze catching
- Butter, for the corn
- Salt and black pepper, used generously
Method
- Light the charcoal an hour before you want to eat. This is the one part of the barbecue that cannot be rushed and the one part of the bank holiday that will absolutely ruin you if you get it wrong. The coals should be white-grey and glowing, not black and sulking. A barbecue lit at 2pm is a gamble; one lit at 12pm is a lifestyle.
- While the coals get going, make the glaze: a good spoon of brown sauce, the Dijon mustard, your splash of BBQ sauce, and the sugar, stirred together. Brown sauce on beef ribs is the British answer to a question the Americans never thought to ask, and it works. Pat the ribs dry, salt and pepper them hard — they’ll be on the grill for a while and they’ll take it — and rub the glaze all over.
- Split the sweetcorn, brush it with butter, and give it a little salt. Put it on the grill early and turn it the way you’d check your phone, which is constantly. It’s done when the outside has gone a little charred and the inside is still sweet, which is to say: like the day, looking better than the forecast promised.
- Put the sausages on, not too close to the coals — you want them browned, not performed on. Turn them often. Sausages are the one part of the barbecue where constant attention is actually rewarded, like a queue that’s really moving.
- Chips go on last, because they’re quick and they’re the part everyone’s been waiting for. Thick-cut, well-oiled, in for the final ten minutes. They should come out golden on the outside and properly soft in the middle — like the day itself, looking better than the forecast promised.
- The coleslaw needs no fire. Shred the cabbage, grate the carrot, dress it with the mayonnaise and the splash of cider vinegar, and let it sit in the fridge. It’s the one cold thing on a barbecue and the one thing the dog will not be allowed near. It’s what stops the whole thing being just meat and chips — the difference between a barbecue and a very expensive kebab.
- Lay the ribs on the coals, put the lid on, and let them do the long, slow thing — an hour to an hour and a half, turning and basting with more glaze as you go. They’re done when the glaze is dark and sticky and the meat pulls off the bone with the confidence of a man who has checked the forecast three times.
Serve it all on one table, or two, or the patio, depending on how the weather has treated you. The glaze keeps in the fridge for a week, which is more than can be said for most bank holiday optimism. And if it does rain — and it will — you’ve still got a barbecue that was worth the forecast all along.
