Even though I’m making pork ribs with black beans sauce, one of the key here is, of course, my new toy Sous Vide cooker!
Honestly, I am very new to this Sous Vide cooker. I only got this equipment for a short time and am still exploring all kinds of possibility with this toy. I had made Sous Vide steak, Sous Vide chicken breast and Sous Vide salmon, and all of them were delicious.
However, when it comes to traditional Chinese dishes. It’s kind of hard to find an application for sous vide. Most of the Chinese dishes required high heat, flame broil or deep fry; they all are cooked at boiling point or beyond. In order for us to maximize the benefit of Sous Vide – constant temperature control over long period of time, I found a dish that will be a perfect fit – pork ribs with black bean sauce.
The traditional way of cooking this dish require you to steam with really precise timing so the meat is cooked but still tender. With Sous Vide, we will get the best “steam” pork ribs ever (in my 10 yrs of cooking career!) Now let’s see how we make it!
Ingredient
- 1.5 lb of pork spare rib
- ¼ cup of soy sauce
- 2 tbsp of rice wine
- 2 tbsp of water
- ½ tbsp of sesame oil
- ½ tbsp of sugar
- 2 cloves of garlic minced
- 1 red Thai chili
- ½ cup of water
- 2 tbsp of starch
- 1 tbsp of oil
- ¼ cup of fermented black beans
- 3 branches of Chinese broccoli
First, take a look at my “pork belly with garlic sauce”. There is one great technique that let you remove the bad smell of pork. Simply prepare a cold water pot, place your pork rib in it. Bring it to about 150 F over at least 40 min. All the bad smell can be removed with just one pot of water!
Since it’s going to be a bit hard to mix the marinade in a bag with pork ribs, we are going to mix it well before we place the pork ribs in. Simply add all marinade to the ziploc bag and mix it well.
Now it’s time to add the pork ribs!
As you can see, I squeezed out most of the air using the water displacement method. In our “Hainan Chicken Rice”, we mentioned that you can utilize the water pressure to squeeze out lots of air in a water pot. Do try it out again to get yourself familiar with this technique! After that, keep in refrigerator for at least 3 hrs.
Now it’s the time to cook! Prepare a pot that is tall enough to insert your Sous Vide machine. Put in your ziploc bag, set the temperature to 70C/158F for 3 hrs. Sit back and relax for the next 3 hrs!
Once it’s done, remove from the water bath. See how nice the result is! Please do keep the gravy in the bag, it’s the base of our final sauce!
Mince garlic, black beans and Thai chili first. Take a pan, add a tbsp of oil and heat it up at medium heat. Once the pan is hot, stir fry the ingredient for 30 sec!
Once the ingredient is well stir-fried, add the gravy to it, bring to boil. In the meantime, prepare your water starch mixture by mixing the water with starch. Pro tip: since the solution is heterogeneous, always mix it up again before you pour it to the pan.
Once the gravy is boiling, add the water/starch mixture and stir quickly. Your gravy should turn from white to translucent in a short amount of time. Once it’s translucent, your gravy is thicken and ready to go!
Boil your Chinese broccoli for 3 min. This is for decoration purpose only. Choose a green veggie you like!
Enjoy!
- 1.5 lb of pork spare rib
- ¼ cup of soy sauce
- 2 tbsp of rice wine
- 2 tbsp of water
- ½ tbsp of sesame oil
- ½ tbsp of sugar
- 2 cloves of garlic minced
- 1 red Thai chili
- ½ cup of water
- 2 tbsp of starch
- 1 tbsp of oil
- ¼ cup of fermented black beans
- ½ tbsp of sugar
- 3 branches of Chinese broccoli
- “Living water run” the pork rib - put in a pot of cold water and slowly bring to approx. 150F
- Prepare a ziploc bag, mix soy sauce, rice wine, water, sesame oil and sugar evenly in the bag
- Add the pork rib into the bag.
- Squeeze out air as much as possible, seal the ziploc back
- Keep in the refrigerator for at least 3 hrs.
- Prepare the Sous Vide set
- Set the water temp to be 70C/158F for 3 hrs, put the ziploc bag in
- Remove the bag from the water, remove the pork rib and set it aside. Keep the juice for gravy making
- Mince garlic, black beans and Thai chili
- heat up a pan at medium heat, add a tbsp of oil
- Add ingredients and stir fry for 30 sec
- Add the gravy to the pan
- Mix the water with starch
- Once it’s boiling, add the water/starch mixture to the boiling pan, mix well
- Once the mixture turn translucent and thicken. gravy is ready
- Boil a pot of water, cook the Chinese broccoli for 3 min
- Plate the dish
One comment