A few weekends ago, we stocked up on baby back ribs when we saw them on sale at the supermarket. What can I say, the secret is out. It worked out well. The oven-baked ribs in the char siu style are the best idea we’ve had for a blog experiment in a while.
So, What’s The Deal With The Char Siu Flavor In These Ribs?
To those who haven’t tasted our char siu recipe or aren’t familiar with char siu, it is a sort of Chinese BBQ pork that belongs to the family of Cantonese roast meats that also includes Siu Yuk, or crispy roast pig belly.
These oven-baked ribs share a marinade with our char siu recipe, and the two are nearly interchangeable.
This also holds for the cooking procedure. Boneless pork shoulder is cooked in the oven for 50 minutes to make char siu. The ribs need an extra hour of cooking time because they are bone-in.
But the result is the same: a sweet and salty taste in an incredibly juicy and soft rib that, in my opinion, is incomparably superior to any BBQ sauce.
Please note that this recipe calls for five spice powders, sesame oil, Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce, all of which are often found in Chinese cuisine.
These aren’t that hard to come by in comparison to other obscure Chinese components.
You might not even need to go to an Asian market to get things like five spice, soy sauce, sesame oil, and hoisin sauce; we’ve seen them all at conventional grocery stores.
Shaoxing rice wine is the one ingredient you may have trouble finding. However, a dry sherry cooking wine or mirin can be used as a suitable substitute if you can’t find it in the supermarket.
Now that we’ve got everything out of the way, we can get to the recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1.4 kg of baby back ribs
- 3 cloves of finely minced garlic
- 1/4 cup of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of shaoxing wine
- 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of hoisin sauce
- 2 teaspoons of molasses
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil
- 1/2 teaspoon of five spice powder
- 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon of red food coloring
Instructions:
- The ribs should be washed and dried completely using paper towels. To make the marinade, combine the remaining ingredients in a basin.
- Keep a third of the marinade for basting, and use the rest to coat the ribs. You need to marinate the ribs for at least two hours. Marinating for at least a full day yields the greatest results.
- Put the rack with the ribs on it on a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Position the pan in the oven with a cup of water in it. Do a 30-minute roast.
- After baking, baste the ribs with the marinade. Roast for another 30 minutes after returning to the oven.
- Just give those ribs five minutes to chill out. Just cut it up and serve!