When husband came home with good bargain, I was always the thrilled one. It had been awhile we ate pork ribs because ribs are super expensive in my context. However, husband found a good deal at 50% discount. The prices on the price tag were before discounted. Let's cook something!
Classic Pork Ribs Stew in Chinese Style
I had also bottles of soy sauce going to expire next year January, I was thinking to make full use of them. What better way to use than cooking classic soy sauce pork ribs stew. This recipe is our classic Chinese style of cooking. My Grandma from Penang loved to cook this for us last time because all the children loved it. We called it "tao yiu bak" in Hokkien. But my grandma usually used pork belly. Let's try with pork ribs, shall we?
Steps
Look the the huge size of pork ribs. I decided to cook all to eat for few times, save my time!
As usual, always preboiled to remove any scum so that the outcome would be a clean stew. After preboiled, I usually rinsed the meat one more time.
For Chinese soy sauce stew, I added in cinnamon, cloves, star anise and whole garlic bulb with skin on, following my Grandma's recipe.
Prepared the soy sauce and oyster sauce in the cooking pot. I added a litre of water, one cup of soy sauce, half cup of caramel thick soy sauce, half cup of oyster sauce, two tablespoon of Shaoxing wine and pepper. Salt I added at the last because Grandma said salt slowed down the cooking.
Pork ribs and the above were added in and put the setting to stew for 90 minutes. If you cook on stove, you have to consistently watch over the pot, adding in water if it dries up. And also not forgetting stir. I was in a rushing mode, so using electric pot was the best.
Later on, I figured to make it a one-pot stew. The easiest way was to add in carrots and potatoes and hardboiled egg. I added the carrot and potatoes after one hour stewing. One thing I love this dish was it can be quite versatile. Last time, my Grandma would add in cauliflower and broccoli too as well as hard tofu. Sometimes, she added in radish and bean curd skins.
Soy sauce stewed pork ribs done!
After 90 minutes, I added in salt and some rock sugar to enhance the flavour! I set the pot to another 10 minutes quick boil for this stage. At the same time, I made some slurry starch to thicken the sauce a little.
Look at that, juicy tender pork ribs!
Definitely finger-licking delicious when I saw how my husband ate those ribs with fingers.
Myself and children ate this with a plate of warm rice. I cooked too much actually, and we ended up eating this for two and a half days, both lunch and dinner and lunch. Glad that no one complained and we all really thanked God for food on the table.