July 4th Meal

I decided I was going to be All-American and make a patriotic meal of ribs for the 4th. My husband was pretty psyched - and then he saw what I had made for him. :) It's not my fault that I just can't seem to make food the way it should be. I mean, I don't really grill, and we don't have a smoker. I'm not really sure what he expected me to do. I know now that when I recipe says to bake spare ribs for 1 hour or less, run away. Far, far away. The good news is that the marinade and basting sauce for the ribs was fantastic! I just should have known that I should have baked (or slow cooked) the ribs for several hours.

When my parents were in town visiting I was showing them my pantry and all the "new-to-me" things I had bought. As soon as I showed my dad that hoisin and oyster sauce, he told me he had a great Chinese barbecue sauce recipe for ribs that he'd send me when they got home. Thirty some odd years ago my dad took a Chinese cooking class and has the old school recipe booklet to show for it, along with some pretty fantastic recipes inside. I always looked forward to the special occasions growing up when he would make sweet and sour pork from that little booklet. More recently, I hear he makes a mean Pepper Steak from the same class. I knew I would love the marinade.





Half of the 3+ pounds of Spare Ribs I bought

 So HUGE disclaimer here - make sure you cook your spare ribs low and slow. Every. Single. Time. The sauce was amazing, but was wasted on the ribs. They turned out tough, and chewy, and were much more trouble than they were worth to eat. I think we both gnawed on about 2-3 ribs and then ended up throwing the rest away. Matt wants to try the sauce out on Salmon sometime - I bet that would be good.

2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon pale, dry sherry (I didn't have any so I used rice vinegar - tasted great!)
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
2 Tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 Tablespoons oyster sauce
2 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon red food coloring (optional - you can see I didn't use any, but using it would add more visual appeal)

I think you could use this on any type of protein - ribs, tenderloin, salmon - up to about 3 pounds. Combine all ingredients for marinade in a gallon size zip top bag and mix well. I cut my ribs down into individual pieces and placed them in the zip top bag. Marinate for at least 4 hours, if not overnight.

**Here's what I did - I do not recommend you do the same with spare ribs.**
Place large oven proof dish of water on bottom rack of oven. (This helps meat not to dry out so much - sorta.) Preheat oven to 350. Spread ribs out evenly in a baking dish so they are not touching. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and baste with marinade. This is when I realized I didn't have any more marinade, so I made another batch and used that to baste the meat. It made the perfect amount. Increase oven temperature to 375 and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Done!

(I saw some recipes where they cooked at a lower temperature for a longer period of time, basting the meat every 10 minutes. That may have given the ribs a more sticky, thick coating of sauce that most people love.)

I served this up with some white rice and steamed snow peas tossed in a little bit of sesame oil and soy sauce. Delicious!!