Sweet and Sour Ribs（糖醋排骨）
Sweet and Sour Ribs is one of the most famous and popular Chinese dishes. Every piece of the spare ribs are coated with amber color sauce, which has a perfectly balanced sweet and sour taste. After 1 hour of slow cooking, the meat is so flavorful and fall off the bone tender.
Equipment
- Measuring spoons
- wok/fry pan with lid
- Nonstick heat-resistant turner
Ingredients
- 900 g spare ribs - chopped into 1½-inch short pieces (about 2 lbs)
- 1 L cold water (for blanching the ribs)
- 1 tbsp cooking oil (I used vegetable oil)
- 5 tbsp cane sugar (Chinese rock sugar would actually do a better job in this recipe)
- 2 stalks green onion/scallion (about 20g)
- 5 slices of ginger (about 10g)
- 3 tbsp cooking wine
- 3 tbsp regular soy sauce (not dark soy sauce)
- 5 tbsp Chinkiang vinegar (also known as black rice vinegar)
- 400 ml hot water (for boiling the ribs)
- ½ tbsp roasted sesame seeds (optional)
Instructions
Prepare ingredients and sauce
- Cut 10g ginger into 5 slices. Cut the green onions/scallions into halves, cut the white stem parts into 2-inch pieces, finely chop the green leaf parts. Set aside.
- Add cooking wine, regular soy sauce, and Chinkiang vinegar into a small bowl. Set aside.
Blanch the ribs
- Put chopped spare ribs into a large pot, add enough cold water (I used about 1L water here) to make sure that every piece of the ribs are immersed in water.
- Bring the water to a boil over high heat. Use a spoon to skim off the foam appearing on the surface.
- Once there's no more foam released from the ribs, drain the ribs.
Cook the sweet and sour ribs
- Preheat a wok/fry pan over medium high heat for 1 minute. Add 1 tbsp cooking oil to the wok. Add the blanched ribs to stir fry over medium high heat until the ribs turn golden brown.
- Turn off the heat, transfer the ribs to a plate. Use a spoon to scope out some oil in the wok. Leave about 1 tbsp of oil in the wok.
- Turn on the stove to medium heat, add 5 tbsps of sugar (or 50g Chinese rock sugar) to the wok, stir fry with a nonstick heat-resistant turner over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the sugar melts and turns into golden brown.
- Quickly but carefully add the stir-fried ribs to the wok, stir fry over medium heat until every piece of the ribs is evenly coated with the caramelized sugar.
- Pour the sauce we've prepared in previous step over the ribs. Add about hot water to immerse the ribs. (I added about 400ml hot water. The amount of hot water might vary depending on the shape and size of your wok.) Add in ginger slices and the white stem part of the green onions.
- Cover the lid, bring to a boil over high heat, then turn the heat to low to simmer for 1 hour.
- 1 hour later, open the lid, pick out and discard all the gingers and green onions. Reduce the sauce over high heat for about 7 minutes, keep stirring so that every piece of the ribs are evenly coated with the sauce.
- Once there's almost no sauce left in the bottom of the wok, remove from heat. Sprinkle chopped green onions and sesame seeds (optional) over the ribs. Transfer to a serving plate, serve with steamed white rice.