Hoisin Ribs – Sybaritica

Years ago, when I lived in Woodstock, New Brunswick, there was a Chinese restaurant not far from my house. It was a very much a westernized Chinese eatery, and, in general, the food wasn’t especially remarkable, but they did a glazed rib dish on their lunchtime buffet that was always excellent. In particular, they used much longer ribs than the typical one-inch deals in the standard ‘Honey-Garlic Ribs’ and they were never cooked to the point that the meat fell apart. The glazing sauce was very simple – sweet with a nice malty background taste – and it wasn’t until a long time afterwards that I finally recognized it as being little else other than Hoisin Sauce. Today’s presentation duplicates those ribs as best as could manage. You can, of course, do a much larger batch as a main course offering, but I used a pound of nicely cut back ribs to make an appetizer, or Dim Sum type dish…

The first step is to coat the ribs with a couple of tablespoons of Hoisin Sauce and then bake them on a rack in a very hot (500 degree) oven for about 15 minutes or so. This will brown them nicely and also drain away some of the fat.

Afterwards, transfer the ribs to a casserole dish and cover them with a braising liquid composed of 3 tablespoons of water and one tablespoon of sugar for each cup of water. In this case, I only needed one cup of water.

Bake the ribs at 375 degrees, turning several times in the liquid, until the sauce has reduced to a syrupy glaze. This will take about an hour. Serve in small dishes with a little of the remaining sauce spooned over.

That’s it…