Oh yes baby :)
Apologies to the vegetarians out there, this one is not very animal-friendly. But damnnn is it good! You will need a couple hours ahead of you, a pressure cooker and an oven for this keto-friendly recipe
Ingredients:
- 1kg of pork ribs, bones on of course
- Chinese 5 spices mix (Or mix together equal parts of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground ginger, and anise seeds)
- a cinnamon stick
- a piece of ginger (peeled and grated)
- 6 garlic cloves (crushed)
- a few star anise stars
- 1 spoon of Sichuan pepper
- 1 handful of dry Sichuan chillies
- 150mL of light soy sauce
- 100mL of apple cider vinegar
- 200mL apple juice OR you can mix 50mL of mirin and another 100mL of apple cider vinegar
- 50g of brown sugar
- 2 onions (roughly chopped)
- a tube of tomato paste
- a bunch of spring onions
- a neutral cooking oil like canola or rapeseed
- a box of mushrooms (I like the brown ones)
Method:
Take the ribs out of the fridge and dry rub them with enough Chines spice mix to cover them properly. Let sit at ambient temperature, ideally for a couple hours.
In a pan or in your pressure cooker if you're lazy, fry the ribs (do this in several batches to ensure you brown them evenly). Remove from the fire and set aside on a plate when they're brown on the outside but still bloody inside, you just want to create some sort of crisp prior to actually cooking them.
Also lightly fry your chillies, onions, ginger and garlic while you're at it :)
Set everything aside and wipe the oil off your pressure cooker if you've used it for the frying. Now pour in the tomato sauce, soy sauce, cider vinegar, apple juice, sugar and mix well. Pour back in the garlic, ginger, onions and of course ribs. Finally, drop the cinnamon stick, Sichuan pepper, anise stars and chillies. Try to make sure your ribs are well covered by the mix before you close the pressure cooker's lid.
You're going to cook this for 20minutes (15 if you like chewier, 25min if you prefer completely fall-off-the-bone) and release the pressure when time's off.
With cooking tongs, take out the ribs and chillies and put them on your oven tray. Add chopped mushrooms.
Pre-heat your oven to 230C (450F). Yep, very hot! If you have a grill function, that works perfectly fine too!
Filter the liquid through a strainer, into a saucepan. You want to keep out all the ginger fiber, Sichuan peppercorns and other unpleasant things to chew on, but press well to get all the meaty bit of the onions out.
Now simmer this liquid and boil it long enough to reduce it to a thicker liquid, more of a sauce.
Once it's reduced enough to your taste (bear in mind it still needs to go through the oven so don't make it toooo thick either), pour this over your tray, brushing the ribs and mushrooms to cover them perfectly.
Put on the top rack of your oven/grill and keep an eye on it while it cooks for 10-15minutes. I find the mushrooms to be a good indicator of how cooked /crispy I want the whole thing to be.
Sprinkle with spring onions and EAT!
Let me know if you try it and if you have any improvement suggestions!
In the meantime, bon appétit! :)