Sweet and sour spare rib (糖醋排骨)is a quite popular dish in China. However, mostly people will eat it in restaurant rather than at home since it is not a simple task to control the ratio of sugar and vinegar.
Restrict, spare ribs are selected as the main ingredients. The popularity is not only due to its delicious taste but also its beautiful color.
You may wonder which cuisine this sweet and sour spare rib belongs to? In fact, there are different versions in different cuisines. But most commonly it is considered as Zhejiang cuisine and Sichuan Cuisine.
Though the processes in different cuisines might be slightly different, the key point is similar—controlling the proportion of the condiments. My mother used to cook a typical Sichuan version of sweet and sour spare rib. Today I am introducing the most basic process.
Generally pork ribs should be cooked around 30 minutes after rinsed in boiling water. If you are familiar with Chinese cooking methods, I guess it should be a common sense to rinse the meat ingredients in boiling water to get rid of the blood water and smelly taste if some of they do have some.
Then the second import step is to marinade the cooked ribs. Why? That’s because we want to give the dish a nice color. The proportion of different types of condiments should be 1 tablespoon cooking wine, 1 tablespoon light soy sauce and half tablespoon dark soy sauce (different types of soy sauce have different functions) and then add 1 tablespoons of dark vinegar to marinade for about 12 minutes. This step will help to color the ribs and also flavor it.
Then spare ribs should be deep-fried until the skin becomes a little bit crisp. This step is really important! Then add marinade sauce, 3 tablespoon of white sugar and half bowl of meat soup to simmer.
Turn up the fire to reduce exceeded sauce. Then at the last, add half tablespoon of dark vinegar. There comes the sweet and sour taste.
- Spare ribs 1 pound
- 1 tablespoon cooking wine
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- ½ tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 3 tablespoon vinegar
- 3 tablespoon sugar
- ½ tablespoon salt
- ½ tablespoon white sesame seed
- Cut ribs into sections about 4 cm. Rinse in boiling water to get rid of blood water
- Pour water in wok and cook for about 30 minutes.
- Move the cooked ribs out and marinade with 1 tablespoon of cooking wine, 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
- Heat up oil in wok and deep fry marinated ribs until the color of skin changes.
- Move deep fried ribs out and pour exceeded oil out. Add the marinade sauce in work and three tablespoons of sugar in to cook for 2 minutes. Add ½ tablespoon of salt and turn up the fire to cook out exceeded sauce.
- Put the ribs in plants and sprinkle white sesame seeds.
Other rib recipes for your reference:
