Shanghai-Style Sweet & Sour Pork Ribs
my dad's 糖醋排骨 (táng cù pái gǔ) recipe
SHANGHAI-STYLE SWEET & SOUR PORK RIBS
A staple in the Southern region of China. It will rock your palate at any temperature (I’ve eaten it pipin’ hot to room temp, and as an appetizer at Chinese restaurants, it’s often served cold), which makes it a great meal-prep/work lunch option too!
TOTAL TIME: 2 hours if you’re seasoned, 3.5 hours to be safe
SERVING SIZE: enough for 1 hungry caveman (read the Elevator Pitch for what I mean by caveman) or 2-ish meals for 2 people (when served with side dishes)
4-5 lbs baby back/spare ribs (fat trimmed off, cut into individual rib segments)
4 stalks of green onions (cut to 2-inch segments)
2-inch knob of fresh ginger (peeled, cut into large flat pieces)
12 garlic cloves (loosely chopped, yielding large shards)
6 TBSP Shaoxing Wine
4 TBSP Dark Soy Sauce
4 TBSP Granulated Sugar
4 TBSP Chinese Black Vinegar
Place cut ribs in a bowl filled with enough water to submerge all of the ribs. Rinse and repeat until the water runs clear (took me two rinses)
Remove the ribs from the water and let air dry (I let them sit still & pretty in a colander)
~insert intermission to chop the alliums & aromatics to give the ribs more drying time~
Heat your pan (big enough to hold all of the ribs) with oil at medium-high heat
Once the oil is hot and shimmery, begin frying the ribs so they are cooked & golden on most sides (don’t get too hung up on getting it super golden or anything, the idea is to get some crisp and for the meat to retain moisture)
Remove the last rib and immediately add the garlic & ginger to the same oil-pan situation. At this point, you’re going to have some cooking dregs on the bottom, don’t let this stress you! Sauté these babies until they’re slightly golden.
Add the ribs back in, with the Shaoxing wine & Dark Soy Sauce
Add water until all the ribs are just submerged and bring the water to a boil (this is your chance to deglaze the pan by scraping the bottom. The prior sauté dregs should lift easily. See, told you not to let them stress you! 😉)
Turn the heat down to medium, cover and cook for 30 minutes
Uncover and turn the heat up to medium-high, cook for 15 minutes, letting the rigorous boil reduce the water and thicken the sauce (at this point, make sure to periodically stir)
Add the green onion segments, continue to cook for 5 minutes while stirring every so often to minimize pan-bottom-dreg-stickage
Add the sugar, cook for 5 minutes while mixing thoroughly (allowing sugar to dissolve, the sauce to thicken even more, and to prevent a pan-bottom-crusting that will be a headache to clean up later)
Add the Chinese Black Vinegar, mix to combine, and serve right away (Chinese Black Vinegar holds its flavor best when not relegated to prolonged cooking heat)
EAT WITH: love it with long grain jasmine rice + stir-fried bok choy, or really any starch-veggie combo you want to employ to soak up all of the saucy juices! (you can see us just enjoying it with regular Yukon Gold potatoes and cauliflower in the first photo)
DO AHEAD: it’s absolutely okay to do up to step 8 the day before, and finish the dish up right before the meal you plan to serve it! My dad does this all the time :)
VISUAL:
ELEVATOR PITCH:
Whenever I am home to visit, my dad makes sure to have these as part of the meal spread at least 3 times a week. Not because I’ve explicitly requested them, but because cooking is his way of showing love and because food is one of my favorite ways to receive it.
There are many many Shanghai-style sweet and sour rib recipes out there, and if you’re playing the comparison game, this one is a little less “traditional” in both the method and ingredients (no separate boiling of the ribs to remove meat scum, no usage of rock sugar—if you’re curious, here are some recipes that use both: Chef BaoBae’s & The Woks of Life’s), so let’s just get that fact out of the way now.
For me, my dad’s take is much more approachable and empowers me to have a minimalist kitchen pantry (we all despise those recipes that require an obscure sauce that you only use every 3 years, then end up realizing it went bad when you go to pick it up again on year 4). His version requires three Chinese sauce staples that you may need to trek to an Asian Supermarket for, but once you stock up on these, you’re set for ~70% of Chinese recipes (if you need a reference, Woks of Life has a great Chinese sauce glossary). But of course, if you’re in a pinch or too lazy to run to an Asian Supermarket, feel free to substitute these for any American grocery store version, just obviously know that the flavor profile will be different.
See? Truly an under-10-ingredient-list dish. Yet everything about it is tremendous! These kind of “I can’t believe this came from only that” recipes always leave me in awe.
When these ribs are on the table, I want to just put on my caveman hat and get DOWN**. Then promptly need to change into comfy pants and nurse my food baby. It’s a good thing that these do require a bit of a time investment, so it deters me from doing it on the daily. 🤪
**DOWN defined here as: foregoing eating utensils, gnawing on cartilage, sucking on bone marrow, saucing up my mouth & fingers, using up many many napkins. You get the drift. Not the material for a first date nor the typical definition of lady-like.
ribs loading, belly rumbling...