Homely Pork Spare Ribs

Homely Pork Spare Ribs

Serves 4

This is Stephen’s and my at home special for cooler times. Pork belly that has been well cooked i.e. for 3 hours at 150 degrees C.

Serve with Bloodwood 2023 Schubert Chardonnay or Bloodwood 2019 Shiraz

Ingredients

• 12 pork spare ribs

• ¼ cup homemade plum jam (yellow fleshed plums not blood plums*)

• 1/3 cup soy sauce

• 2T hoi-sin sauce

• 1 large orange (juice and zest)

• 2 gingers (2@ size of a thick thumb, julienne d)

• 1/3 star anise (a petal or 2 only)

• ½ cinnamon stick

• 1T plum vinegar (to taste)

• 6 spring onions (chopped)

• reserved pork stock plus any fond picked up with water

• peanut oil

• sesame oil

• salt and pepper to taste

Bok Choi

• 2 bok choy (cut off bottoms and wash thoroughly)

• 2 carrots (julienne d)

• ginger

• 3 shallots (chopped whites and greens)

• splash of oyster sauce

• peanut oil

• salt and pepper to taste

Method

Pork Spare Ribs

Grease a small baking tray with peanut oil.

Pat the 12 pork spare ribs with a paper towel and squeeze them into that roasting pan so they stand to attention, rind side up. Rub the rind with a little sesame oil then sprinkle with salt. Add 1/2 cup of water down the side of the baking tray, not getting the rind wet. Place in a preheated oven to 150 degrees C and cook for 3 hours. The pork ribs will shrink over the 3 hours cooking time. You may have to rearrange them so they are all still standing upright.

Pour off the fat and juices into a bowl and put that into the fridge for the fat to solidify. Discard the fat (you’ll be amazed at how much there is) to reveal the pork stock at the bottom of the bowl that you’ll use in the sauce. I often cook the spare ribs the day or two before using and keep them covered in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Warm the ribs up in that same baking tray. You may have to rearrange the spare ribs to get the best crackling for every one of them. Ones that already look good can be moved to the middle and lower than the others that need extra help to crisp up. Add a splash or two of water in the bottom of the tray so the bottom doesn’t burn while you prepare the sauce.

Sauce

Saute the onions and ginger in some oil and add the rest of the ingredients, pork stock, jam, soy, hoi-sin, orange rind and juice and plum vinegar etc. cinnamon and star anise if you have it. Bring to the boil whilst stirring to dissolve the jam. Taste for balance of sweet, sour and salt. You may have to add water here too if the sauce gets too thick.

Add sauce to the baking tray making sure it does not wet those crisping rinds. You may even have to take your ribs out, put the sauce on the bottom and immerse the ribs in it up to the rind. What you want to achieve is the sauce re-hydrating the pork meat if it has dried out too much but not wet the crackling so you have the best of both worlds, falling apart juicy meat with crisp dried crackling.

Serve with boiled rice and sauteed bok choy.

* Blood plums are too strong a flavour for both the Schubert and the Shiraz.

Shortcuts:

Use a few pinches of Chinese 5 spice instead of a petal of star anise and ½ cinnamon stick. Instead of the pork belly being cut into ribs, just cook individual serves of a block of pork belly. After 3 hours of cooking, you can just separate the rind from the meat and place the rind on a separate lined flat tray to roast. That’ll keep the rind crisp and you can submerge the meat entirely in the sauce.