Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs

Adapted by Kyle Libramonte

Prep Time: 10 mins • Cook Time: 2 hrs

Serves 3

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb Pork Ribs, chopped into 1 1/2 to 2 inch pieces — ask the butcher to cut them down, short pieces have more cut surface for the sauce to grip and they actually fit between chopsticks
2 Stalks Small Green Onions, tied into a knot — the knot is the whole point, it lets you find them and pull them out in one motion at the end, loose pieces cook to slime and you'll be picking them off the ribs
1 Thumb-Sized Piece Fresh Ginger, sliced into coins about 1/8 inch — no need to peel, but slice it rather than mince it, because it comes back out of the pot later
25 g Rock Sugar, roughly 2 TBSP crushed, or 2 TBSP white sugar
2 TBSP Cooking Wine
3 TBSP Braising Sauce — read the label, the first ingredient should be dark soy, and it's already salted, which is why the salt at the end is optional and not a given
1 TBSP Olive Oil
Salt, optional
About 2 1/2 Cups Hot Water, plus more for topping up — less than a stovetop braise needs, since almost nothing evaporates under a closed lid on braise mode
1 Kettle of Hot Water, kept hot the whole time — every top-up has to be hot, and you want it hot before you need it, not after
1 Plate or Shallow Bowl — for parking the blanched ribs, and you want it out before you start

Instructions:

Blanch on Sear/Sauté High and Get the Ribs Out Fast: Fill the pot a little over halfway, run sear/sauté on high with the lid on until it reaches a full boil, then add the ribs and leave them 1 to 2 minutes, until the surface turns grey and the water clouds. Pull them straight out to the waiting plate. This is a rinse, not a cook — the blanch is only there to draw out the blood and scum that would otherwise cloud the braise and leave the finished sauce with a faintly barnyard edge, and ribs left in past two minutes start giving up the flavor you're about to spend two hours building.
Rinse Warm, Never Cold, and Dry the Ribs Completely: Dump the blanching water, rinse the ribs under warm running water, and pat every piece dry with paper towels. Warm is not a preference — cold water sets the rendered fat into a grey film that clings to the meat and goes straight back into the pot with it. Dry matters just as much: a wet rib will steam in the oil instead of searing, and you don't get a second shot at that surface once it's in the braise.
Wipe the Pot Down Before You Sear: Towel the pot dry, set it back on the base, restart sear/sauté on high with the lid off, and give it three or four minutes before the oil goes in. Clay comes up slower than metal and holds heat once it's there, and that wait is the difference between a sear and a slow grey poach. Any blanching water left in the bottom has to go, because the pot can't brown anything while it's boiling off leftover liquid.
Sear in Bare Oil Before Any Sauce Touches the Pot: Add the olive oil, let it shimmer, then add the ribs in a single layer with space between them and stir about a minute, until the outsides tighten and start to catch. This minute belongs to the meat and nothing else. Sauce added now would sit between the ribs and the clay and there would be no browning at all, just simmering in soy — and browning is the whole difference between ribs that taste braised and ribs that taste boiled in a dark liquid.
Drop to Low Before the Braising Sauce Goes In: Switch sear/sauté to low, add the braising sauce, and keep the ribs turning over each other for 3 to 5 minutes until every piece carries the same deep, glossy color. Low and constant is the only way through this — the sauce is mostly soy and sugar, and clay holds its heat well past the moment you change the setting, so a thin layer will scorch in patches while you're looking somewhere else. Uneven coating now stays uneven, because the color a rib takes on here is roughly the color it wears on the plate.
Wine and Aromatics Onto Hot Dry Clay: Bring sear/sauté back to high, pour in the cooking wine, then add the knotted scallions and the ginger coins and stir a few minutes more. The wine has to hit hot clay rather than a pool of liquid — it flashes off almost immediately, and the point is that it carries the raw pork smell out of the pot with it as it goes. Add it later, into a full pot of braising liquid, and it strips nothing and just sits there tasting like wine.
Hot Water In, Lid On, Switch to Braise: Pour in hot water until the ribs are nearly but not quite covered, about 2 1/2 cups, and bring it to a boil on sear/sauté high with the lid off. Then lid on, switch to braise, and set it for 60 minutes. Cold water is the one thing you can't do here — it seizes the muscle fibers in meat this hot and you'll fight that tightness for the rest of the cook, and clay doesn't take a sudden swing like that well either.
Sixty Minutes Lidded and Leave It Alone: Let braise run the full hour without lifting the lid. The mode holds a low steady simmer by itself, so there's nothing to adjust, and every look costs you heat that clay is slow to put back. When the timer ends you should find lazy movement in the pot and the liquid still close to the top of the ribs, since a closed lid returns most of what evaporates — that's normal here and not a sign you've added too much water.
Rock Sugar at the Hour Mark, Not the Start: Stir in the rock sugar, put the lid back on, and run braise another 30 minutes, topping up with hot water now if the level has dropped below the ribs. The sugar goes in late on purpose: rock sugar dissolves slowly and gives the sauce its gloss, but sitting in the pot for the entire braise it concentrates as the liquid reduces and tips past caramel into something faintly bitter. Thirty minutes dissolves it completely and no longer.
Lid Off and Back to Sear/Sauté to Reduce: Pull out the scallion knot and the ginger coins, take the lid off, and switch to sear/sauté on low, stirring every minute or two as the liquid boils down. Braise holds a simmer but it will not reduce anything under a closed lid, so this is the step that turns braising liquid into sauce. Stand at the pot for it — soy and sugar go from coating to lacquered to scorched in well under a minute, and once the sugar burns it's the only thing you'll taste.
Taste Before You Reach for the Salt: When the liquid looks syrupy and slides off the spoon in a sheet, taste it, and if it's flat add salt a pinch at a time with a taste between each. Grandma doesn't salt this at all and lets the braising sauce carry it, which holds up right until the pot has been diluted — so this mostly comes up if you topped off the water more than once. Remember it's still reducing while you decide, and whatever you add now gets more concentrated by the time it's on the plate.
Switch the Unit Off Rather Than Letting It Idle: Take it off the heat while a few spoonfuls of loose sauce still pool around the ribs, and switch the unit off instead of dropping it to keep warm. Hot clay carries the sauce further on its own for a minute or two after the power is cut, and keep warm stacked on top of that will run it dry and scorch the sugar on the bottom while you're plating. Transfer to a plate and spoon the sauce over the top.