Chinese Spare Ribs | Grandpa's Secret Recipe! | The Woks of Life

I did say to my father that I wouldn't tell anybody but here we are. We're publishing the recipe. Hi everybody, it's Bill from the Walks of Life and today I'm going to show you how to make Chinese spare ribs. A great recipe, classic from days when I was working in the Catskills and Holiday Inn. One of the first secret recipes that I learned. My father, when he taught me that, he told me that. He goes, nobody would teach you this. And let me tell you, everybody who tried those spare ribs, whether they were on a poopoo platter or where they were a rack, they loved it. Busboys, waiters, waitresses, porters who kind of snuck in the back in the kitchen when the rack of ribs came out. They were like, so good. I'd walk by it in the sheet pan. I'd take my little Swiss army knife out and just like shave off a little piece and wow, kept me going for the rest of the day. So I'm going to show you how to make that. You're going to make it at home. So let's get started. So what do you need for these ribs? Salt, sugar, hoisin sauce, ground bean sauce, ketchup, sesame oil, pineapple juice, white pepper, five spice powder, fresh garlic and a little Shaoxing wine. That's it. We're going to mix it all together, rub down the rib and then let it marinate overnight. Put it in the oven. Oh, and remember maltose. Now you can use honey, but maltose is the best. It gives the ribs a nice sticky coating. You actually use St. Louis cut of ribs to learn all about ribs and different rib cuts. Check out our post on ribs and rib types. We also have a YouTube video on that where I explain everything, how to get the best cut of ribs, pluses and minuses for different types. And we'll leave that video link in the description and put it right there. So check it out. Let's get started with marinating the ribs. Very first thing we have is a bowl with our minced garlic, five cloves, dry ingredients first, one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of salt, five tablespoons of sugar, three, four, five. And this marinade recipe makes enough for three pound rack of ribs, plus or minus. Could be a little under three pounds, could be three and a half pounds. Next, the white pepper, half teaspoon, one teaspoon, five spice powder. And can anyone name the five spices in the five spice powder? Cinnamon, fennel, cloves, star anise, and some white pepper. Very fragrant. And now we go on to the wet ingredients. One teaspoon sesame oil, toasted sesame oil, always. Hoisin sauce, two tablespoons. That's one and two. And then next, this ground bean sauce you can find in the Chinese market. It's not the sweet bean sauce, it's brown bean sauce. Tablespoon of that. And if you have questions about it, you just check our ingredients glossary. It's a little chunky. Here's some hoisin on my finger. The hoisin is sweeter. This has a deeper, richer flavor. Next, we'll add ketchup, three tablespoons, one. That's a heavy two, that's three. Shaoxing wine. If you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use a little dry sherry. If you're really strict about your alcohol intake, you can always leave it out. And last, but certainly not least, pineapple juice, one tablespoon. I am going to mix this all up. So now that we have this all mixed up, you have to make a decision. Want coloring in here? And if you do, you can use a little beet juice. You could also use red bean curd. I think the red bean curd adds more of a different flavor. Usually we don't add it. We didn't add it in my father's recipe and we're not going to do it today. We're going to add a little bit of food coloring for maximum effect. A little nostalgia for the old days. Five, six, seven, eight drops. It sure makes it look a lot more appetizing. And if you're not averse to it, I would use it. That's the difference now. The food coloring adds a richness of color to it. I just smell this aroma of garlic and all the spices now that they're mixed together. So good. Now we're going to marinate the ribs. We got our marinade mixed up. First things first is we've got this out of the fridge. Our St. Louis rack of ribs. It got a little bit wet. You want to kind of pat that dry just a little bit. We don't want it dripping. Pat this dry. So this is like a somewhat of a small rack of ribs. It's about three pounds, maybe a little bit shy, which is a good size. Take this over here, rub it on one side. Make sure you get the sides and be generous with it. Before you put it in the oven, if you've got too much sauce on it, you can always scrape it off. So that's a good amount of sauce. Turn it right over. This rack is kind of small. If you're that kind of person, you want a lot of sauce for marinating and a lot of sauce for basting, it's good for one rack. If you're like, hey, this is a lot of sauce, you make two racks. It's fine too. And what we used to do in the restaurant when we're marinating, let's say 20 racks of these ribs in a big bus box, we used to slide it on one side, put the next one on, put the next one on, and then layer them up. Get a lot, plenty of sauce in between the ribs and make sure everything penetrates. And yes, we would put it in the walk-in box overnight. That's it. We've got this much marinade. Don't worry about the contamination with the pork. I was dipping my hands in and out. It's okay. We're going to put this extra marinade here that we have on the stove, simmer it, add maltose, and use that for basting, which will make our ribs nice and sticky and shiny. I'll cover this with plastic wrap, nice and tight. Luckily, last night, I already marinated a rib and we're going to roast these tonight. And this one's going to be for tomorrow. I have two ribs here. This one has no food coloring and this one has food coloring. That's the difference. So I'm going to reuse plastic wrap. All right, now ready for the fridge. So the first time my father showed me how to make this sauce, he had a five-gallon bucket. He said, this is a well-guarded secret, so don't share it with anybody. He took two five-pound bags of sugar, dumped it in, two pounds of salt, a gallon can of hoisin sauce, ground bean sauce, five-spice powder, some sort of fruit juice like pineapple or crushed pineapple, and of course, ketchup. Put all that mixed together. And he saw the look on my face and he says, yeah, you wouldn't believe how much salt and sugar and ingredients are in this, right? That was a five-gallon bucket and we just kept it in the walk-in box. And every time we marinated ribs, like a bus box full, we used that. It went through quite a few bus boxes, so it's a lot of sauce. Here's the setup. Got a sheet pan here. I already lined this with heavy-duty foil. You'll thank yourself later for an easy cleanup. You put a rack like this. The reason why you use a rack, it's got to be elevated because you're going to have water cover the whole bottom. And the reason why you want to do that is any grease that drips down won't smoke. And it also keeps your ribs moist while roasting in the oven. We're going to start these ribs. You want to drip off a little bit. You don't want too much extra marinade. All the marinade has been soaked into the meat overnight. And just lay it across, just like so. If it's a longer rack, lay it at an angle. If that doesn't work, cut it in half, roast it in two pieces. Now we have the rib on the rack. We're going to preheat the oven to 375. Then we're going to roast it on one side for 30 minutes, flip it, roast it another 30 minutes. Then we're going to cover it and then roast it for another 30 minutes if you want a rib with a little bite to it or roast it for a whole hour if you want a much more tender rib. Then what we're going to do is uncover it and then we're going to roast it for another 20-30 minutes and baste it on both sides every 10 minutes. Now while the ribs are roasting, we're going to prepare the basting sauce. Pour into the saucepan and then we're going to add maltose, about a tablespoon. Super, super sticky. Look at this beautiful stuff. And this is what makes it nice and sticky. Is it a tablespoon? About. Is it a little bit more? Probably. It's okay. And then we're going to go to the stove. So we're going to simmer this. You want this on low heat because you definitely don't want to burn it. You just want to cook the rawness out of it and incorporate the maltose. So now we've got this completely simmering all around and the maltose is definitely incorporated and the sauce has thickened a little bit. Right before we put it into the oven, you have to line your pan with water so it doesn't burn. And make sure you use hot water, otherwise it's going to take a long time for it to heat up. You're going to throw off your cooking time. And you just want to put enough water to cover the bottom of your pan. And that's what we got, right about here. And then you can add if you need more. So we're going to put this right in the oven, preheated to 375. And we'll see you in 30 minutes. All right, our first timer went off. 30 minutes later, let's check our ribs. Okay, we're going to turn them over. Always poke at the end. It's a little bit dry. We're going to add a little bit of hot water. And remember, always add hot water. You don't want to add cold water to a hot pan. It's going to cool everything down. Now it's going back in the oven for another 30 minutes. Okay, second timer went off. One hour cooking time. Let's take it out and see what it looks like. Oh boy, that looks really good. So now we're going to baste this one side, flip it over, baste it again. I'm going to cover it, cook it for another 30 minutes. Be generous about it. You'll have some oil on here. The reason why you want to cook it for another half an hour is because you want it tender. This is pretty tender, but this side needs a little bit more time. I'm going to baste it again. We have a generous amount. I'm going to put it back in for another 30 minutes. All right, it's been baking in the oven 90 minutes now. 30 minutes on one side uncovered, 30 minutes on the other side. After we turned it, we covered it, baked it for another 30 minutes, and now we're going to take it out. Fine. Okay, so I'm going to turn it over and give it a quick baste. I might baste it with some of this pan juice, which is really nice. Turn it over. This looks like it's pretty ready. So if you really want it soft, you can bake it longer, but this looks pretty good. We're going to continue basting, and this side looks a little bit saucy. This is the thicker side of the meat, and the pan does look a little dry, so I'm going to add a little hot water. We don't want the pan to be burning on our last round. Now look at how beautiful that is. We're going to build a nice crust on it. We left the thick side of the meat up because the other side looks pretty good already. All we want to do now is build a nice crust because I can feel already that it's very tender. We're going to go for another 20 minutes and baste it two more times, and it's ready. All right, it has been 10 minutes. I'm going to pour some of this juice off in here because our basting sauce has gotten kind of thick. This looks really good already. Let's take a look at the other side. So tender right now, pretty tender, and this looks really good. Let's finish it on this side. Just so I don't let it burn, I'm going to add a little bit more water, and we're going to go back in for 10 minutes, and then we're going to serve, and then we'll be ready to eat. Okay, these ribs are out. If you have this leftover basting sauce, you can leave this on the table for anybody who wants a little extra oomph. What I'm doing now is using a little bit of the pan sauce and just brushing it while it's resting before we serve it. Hot ribs out of the oven are the best. Once they cool down enough, that's what we're waiting for now to handle and cut because they do have to rest. We don't want any of that juice flowing all over the place. All right, so we're ready to cut these ribs. I've been resting, still quite hot. They're sort of angled a little bit, and if you turn them over, you can sort of tell where the bone is, so it actually might be a good idea to cut them from this side. Just look at that. Really nice and juicy, all that juice coming out. Beautiful. I'm going to try the end cut. Look at that. You get great meat on this side, and you get a little bit of burnt end a little bit on this side. I'm going to give this a try. So good out of the oven. The only thing you have to remember when you're cooking these ribs is look at the size and the thickness of your ribs. If they're thicker, bigger, you may want to keep them with the cover longer, and if you like them really falling off the bone, cook them at a lower temperature for longer. You're going to have to lower the temperature from 375 to let's say 325 or even lower. This crusty end here is what a Chinese barbecued spare rib tastes like. I wish you could taste this, but you can try it at home. Barley, you want some, don't you? I bet you do. Sarah, you want to come over and try the ribs? Sarah, try these ribs. Bubba just tried the ribs before you. Gotta put on the apron. Clean bone club. Ribs edition. A rib bib. Rib bib. Nice, you went for the meaty piece. Of course. Not too shabby? I always take bites that are too big. All right, Barley, I'll give you a piece. Wow, really good. Super juicy, very well seasoned. It's like exactly what you expect from a Chinese barbecued spare rib, but meatier. They're usually not this meaty. That's right, not as meaty, not as soft. Why is that? Is it just they're smaller? Yes, yes. I'm pretty sure that meat for the restaurants, they shave it off because you're right, there's usually not as much meat. Yes. All right, folks, you got it from two members of the Woks of Life. Are we biased? Maybe so, but after you make it at home, you'll know why. Sarah, you're in the frame now. You have to move. Oops, oops. Oh, yeah, I didn't drop the spatula this time.