How to make crispy Chinese salt and pepper ribs.
I am a rib fan! The best part of pig in my opinion is pork butt (pork shoulder), pork belly and ribs. There are so many possibilities of ribs, either stewed (rib soup with lotus root) or pan-fried (pan-fried cumin ribs), deep-fried (fried garlic ribs) or roasted (Chinese BBQ Ribs).
The ribs are coated with flour and egg, then fried until crispy and golden brown. The inner side of the ribs are soft and tender with a crispy shell. The fried ribs can be served directly with salt and pepper, or for a richer flavor, tossing with peppers, garlic, ginger and green onions.
In Sichuan cuisine, salt and pepper (椒盐) is referring to a special flavor: Sichuan peppercorn and salt. Sichuan peppercorn is fried with salt over slow fire in order to simulate the aroma. Then ground into powders. Sichuan style salt and pepper has a very unique flavor comparing with common black pepper and salt. I highly recommend you trying Sichuan salt and pepper if you get Sichuan peppercorn on hand.
How to make Sichuan style salt and pepper
- Toss 3 tablespoons of Sichuan peppercorn and 1 tablespoon of salt over slow fire until aromatic and until the salt is slightly browned.
- Cool down completely and ground into powder. Shift to get refined powders.
- The salt and pepper powder can be kept in air-tight container for 1 month.
Cook’s Note
- After soaking the ribs with clean water, the ribs should be drained completely. Any water contained might influence the final flavor.
- Marinate the ribs for a longer time. Overnight marinating is recommended if you are not in a hurry (at least 4 hours marinating is needed)
- I have gotten lots of feedbacks from Chinese steamed ribs with black bean sauce and know some of the ribs are quite hard to cook. So please choose ribs from younger pigs.
- After coating the ribs with flour, let them stay for 10 to 15 minutes so egg liquid and flour can be combined well. Otherwise, the coating flour falls a lot during deep-frying process.
Steps
Soak the ribs with clean water for 30 minutes and change the water at least once. This is to remove any dirty parts and raw taste.
Drain completely and then place all of the marinating ingredients except egg and coating flour at least for 4 hours or over night.
Just before cooking, crack an egg and mix with the ribs.
Coat the ribs with potato flour or starch around 10 to 15 minutes before frying.
Heat oil until there are fine small bubbles surrounding when insert a chop sticker. Place ribs in and fry for 6-8 minutes over small fire. I recommend frying the ribs for two batches. Strain and remove extra oil.
Prepare a pan, add ½ tablespoon of oil and fry garlic, ginger, fresh peppers until aromatic. Place ribs in and toss with salt and pepper. Serve with extra salt and pepper for option. 
Salt and Pepper Ribs
Ingredients
- 500 g ribs select ribs from younger pigs
Marinating
- 1 tbsp. light soy sauce
- ½ tbsp. Chinese cooking wine
- 1 tsp. salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- 2 tsp. starch corn starch or other type
Coating
- 1 egg
- ½ cup potato flour or other flour for coating
- Frying
- 2 cups of oil
Tossing
- 2 garlic cloves chopped
- ½ tbsp. vegetable cooking oil
- 1 tsp. minced ginger
- 2 green onion white part only, finely chopped
- 1 fresh green pepper chopped
- 1 fresh red pepper chopped
- Salt and pepper as needed
Instructions
- Soak the ribs with clean water for 30 minutes and change the water at least once. This is to remove any dirty parts and raw taste.
- Drain completely and then place all of the marinating ingredients except egg and coating flour at least for 30 minutes or over night.
- Just before cooking, crack an egg and mix with the ribs.
- Coat the ribs with potato flour or starch around 10 to 15 minutes before frying.
- Heat oil until there are fine small bubbles surrounding when insert a chop sticker. Place ribs in and fry for 6-8 minutes over small fire. I recommend frying the ribs for two batches. Strain and remove extra oil.
- Prepare a pan, add ½ tablespoon of oil and fry garlic, ginger, green onion and fresh peppers until aromatic.
- Place ribs in and toss with salt and pepper. Serve with extra salt and pepper for option.
Nutrition
Neha Sharma
Those pictures looks so nice. I will try this in weekend. It really looks yummy! Thanks for the recipe.
Elaine
Happy cooking!
Lee De-steunder
hi Elaine, i love this recipe, i was wandering if you had the recipe for fried duck breast with prawn meat stuffing?cannot find it anywhere
thanks Lee
Elaine
No Lee. I have never tried that delicious duck breast dish. Sorry.
Patricia
This recipe looks fantastic, thank you for posting it! I'm going to try it this week. I'll let you know how it goes.
jonathan miller
Best ribs I've ever had really tender &crispy the whole family wanted more & more, doing them again tomorrow ??????????
Elaine
Thanks Jonathan. This is one of my favorite way of making ribs too.
Ces
Hi. Is it just me or I didn't see the roasted salt and pepper in the list of ingredients. When do I use it? For marination or just as sprinkle on the cooked ribs? Please help, I'm planning to cook this soon
Elaine
Ces,
I have introduced how to make Szechuan style salt and pepper in the previous section of the post. You can toss the ribs with a small amount of salt and peppers and serve as a table seasoning.
Mary
I love ribs done like this! I changed it up a bit & used chicken wings.
Elaine
Salt and pepper chicken wings should be super delicious too. Thanks for the feedback. Happy cooking!
DJ
For Szechuan style ribs, how many of the salt and Szechuan pepper mix do I need to put in the marinade to replace the regular salt and pepper? or do i add it while tossing the ribs?
Elaine
I recommend using a ratio of 2:1 (2 Sichuan peppercorn powder VS 1 portion salt). Yes, add this while tossing the ribs.
Liz
So I saved this recipe to try it and my husband bought beef short ribs (scream!) Do I still try this method?
Elaine
Yes, Liz should works fine too.
DC
should it be cold water the ribs are soaked in?
Elaine
Yes, soak the ribs in cold water.
Helen
Hi,
I tried the recipe using a meaty and supposedly tender ribs. But as my experience with deepfrying the ribs directly turns out bad (still hard), i boil them first like ur cumin spare ribs recipe.
Is it ok or it will change the taste?
Thankyou
Elaine
Helen,
The ribs are undercooked or overcooked base on your experience. Yes, boil them firstly and then sauté can work too.
Aisling Murphy
These Sichuan salt and pepper ribs are excellent. I used rice flour which worked really well. I also added a half teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice to the marinade which gave them a lovely flavor. The first batch I made were with small ribs and worked great. The second batch my ribs were large so I slowly simmered them first so they were nice and tender. Then I dried them off well before placing in the marinade. They were superb.
Elaine
Thanks Aisling for the sharing. Boiling at first seems to be a lovely idea.