Because RIBS!!! 💯Chinese Red Braised Spare Ribs - Marion's Kitchen

Glossy, sweet and tangy spare ribs. These guys are so ridiculously addictive. These are my Chinese red braised spare ribs. We are going to use classic Chinese techniques to make this beautiful spare rib dish. And can I say, well, you probably should make double here because they go very fast once they're on the table. All right, let's take a look at the ribs first because there are a couple of little tips and tricks here that we need to get right to get the best dish at the end. If we have a look at the ribs themselves, I've got some really short spare ribs here. If you're buying these from an Asian butcher or an Asian supermarket, it's quite common to find them like this already sort of cut up. You could do them with a longer rib. I just find they don't get as much kind of sauce and traction in the wok. So try and find these shorter ones. And what we want to do is blanch them in some water first of all. That's going to get rid of some of the impurities and some of the kind of gunk that comes out of them. You'll see what I mean a bit later. But start off with some cold water or just room temperature water and then bring this up to a simmer. So now that we've got that water bubbling, you can see the gunky stuff I was talking about up here on the top. And I'm just going to scoop that off. And you want to let those ribs kind of simmer in there at this heat for a couple of minutes more and just keep scooping off any of that stuff at the top. All right, so now I'm going to take these guys out and then just to clean them up just that little bit further, I'm going to rinse them in some water. So now just pluck them out, drain them fairly well and get them out into a bowl. Now let's get on with the red braising part. So Chinese red braising traditionally makes use of like a sugar caramel and then some additional soy sauce and some aromatics to really bring about like a sticky glazed red, well more like mahogany-coloured result. You'll see what I mean. We're going to start off with a little bit of oil. And then Chinese rock sugar would be your traditional sugar to use here. I find it really difficult to get a hold of. So I'm just going to use some brown sugar. I basically want to wait for this sugar to start to melt in the oil. Now the one thing you want to do is make sure you don't burn the sugar here. So once you can start to see it melting, then add in your pork. Now there'll be a little bit of liquid here. So just be a bit careful with some oil splatter here. Now just keep tossing and mixing these ribs around in a sugar mixture. We want to wait for that sugar to start to really thicken up and coat the ribs. So see how we can see that sauce bubbling away in the bottom there? I just want to wait for that to thicken up. Now if you have a look here, my ribs are beautifully coloured and I can see that that oil's starting to separate out and we don't have that much liquid in the bottom here. So now it's time to continue. I'm going to add in some soy sauce and some dark soy sauce and then some Chinese cooking wine. Now I want some vinegar here as well. That's going to give us like a sweet and sour flavour. Now I've got some water here. I've got about a quarter of a cup and what you want to do is pour in the water until the liquid comes sort of about halfway up the side of the ribs here. Don't want too much water because I do want to thicken this sauce up at the end. Just mix that through a little. Now we add in some aromatics. I've got some stems of a spring onion, some ginger, some star anise. Just with this garlic, I just want to lightly crush it. Now pop a lid on and turn the heat down so it's just bubbling away and you want to let these guys go for about 25 minutes. Give them a bit of a stir about halfway through. Alright, let's take a look. It's smelling good. Now I'm just going to take out those aromatics that we put in like the spring onion, and the ginger, and the garlic. Now turn the heat up and I would highly recommend being patient and watching over your little pot here because the last thing you want to do is burn that sauce and ruin everything. So just let it simmer away. It won't take too long, like 10 minutes, 12 minutes max. And I'm just waiting for that sauce to kind of cling and stick to each of those ribs. Now the beautiful alchemy that we're looking for here is that transition from liquid braise to I guess, like sticky, glossy glaze. That like rhymes. I'm totally making poetry here. Ridiculous. Okay, let's get back to the pork ribs. So you can see that the sauce is almost all but gone and we've just got that oil starting to separate at the bottom. That's exactly what I want. Now, the ribs are ready to go. So get these out into a bowl. So this isn't an overly saucy dish. There should be just enough sauce to coat each of those ribs. And now you want a sprinkling of sesame seeds and a little sprinkling of greenery as well. Some spring onions. And there you go. Chinese style braised short ribs. So you could serve this as like a finger food style of thing or more traditionally, you know, with some steamed rice and other little bits and pieces like a Chinese banquet style. Whichever way you want to serve them is fine because they are so delicious on their own. That style of cooking and the way it just seems to penetrate into that rib meat. So good. That really is magic. Still can't believe I was rhyming. I have to edit that out. Very good. If you've got any comments or questions, pop them below. 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