Asian Style Short Ribs

My first slow cooker recipe!! If you don't have a crock pot, don't worry, you can braise this using your stove on low heat. I don't know why I've been having a craving for short ribs recently, but it's been killing me. I was at the grocery store the other day and browsed by the butcher section and they had boneless short ribs, but no bone-in. It was terribly upsetting because I thought I was finally going to get a fix for my craving. Alas, I ended up with pork and made the previous posting (Pork Tacos). Next time I went to the store, I found my bone-in short ribs and this post was created.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs of Beef Short Ribs
• 8 Baby Carrots (or about 1-1.5 full size)
• 1 and a half Stalks of Celery
• 1 cup (for lack of a better measurement) diced Green Onions
• 1 medium sized root of Ginger
• 1 can of Beef Broth
• 1/2 cup of Soy Sauce
• 1/4 cup of Rice Vinegar
• 1/2 cup of Honey
• 1 tablespoon and a half of Hoisin Sauce
• 1 tablespoon of Sriracha Chile Sauce
• 1 tablespoon of Chinese Five Spice Powder
• 1-2 tablespoons of "Shake & Blend" flour or cornstarch
• Freshly Ground Pepper
• Kosher Salt
• Olive Oil
  

I am making this the night before, I will refrigerate it and then let it cook tomorrow when I am at work. There is nothing like coming home to the delicious smell of dinner with such little work involved. So let's get it started with (Most of) the ingredients for the sauce. For some reason, I had forgotten to put the honey in this picture. It might be due to the fact that I was still debating between honey and brown sugar at this point.

Start by dumping the can of beef broth into your crock pot pan.

Next add the 1/2 cup of soy sauce. It's so dark, you can barely see that I have anything in the pot now but, believe me, I do.

Follow with the rice vinegar.

Then add the hoisin sauce.

Follow with your Sriracha. I know what you're thinking, "How weird! Kenny is using Sriracha sauce. I don't think I've ever seen that before." But believe it. What would a blog post be without this stuff? I'm not a big fan of measuring this stuff because I really don't mind if a little too much slips in ;).

Next in is the five spice powder. It makes any and everything taste a little more Asian.

Now we need something to sweeten up the pot (literally). We are going with the 1/2 cup of honey so in she goes.

Get your celery, carrots, and ginger and cut them all up. They are going to help flavor our sauce. Especially the ginger. I adore the ginger in this recipe. Dice them up so they look like this, then toss them into the pot.

Take your green onions and chop them up. We are going to be working from the bottom up here as we want mostly the white part for this. Add the green onions to the pot. We will use the tops for a garnish at the end, so save those!

Next, get your short ribs out and flip them over bone-side up. I like to score the backs because I believe it helps them to break down during the cooking process. So, score the backs and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Flip your short ribs over and inspect them. If you have any silver skin (a thin, pearlescent membrane) on, you will want to remove that. It will never break down. To do so, slide your knife between the membrane and the meat. Try to get as close to the membrane as possible, as we don't want to waste meat. Then bring your knife forward cutting through until the end. You can then peel back on your loose piece and using your knife with the other hand, remove it completely. Also, if there is any excess fat, remove it now. A little bit is ok, but the large chunks have got to go.

Your ribs should look like this now. Drip a little oil on them and then lightly salt and pepper them.

Get your stove top pan as hot as humanly possible now. We want to brown the outside of the short ribs, but have no desire to cook them thoroughly right now. The best way to brown is intense heat. Do your ribs in batches, because crowding the pan cools down the pan and prevents browning. I had eight ribs, so I did it in two batches. Here's the first.

Flip over when you get a beautiful brown on the meat side. The bone side won't brown, but the membrane on the back will begin to break down, so I cook it for two minutes on the bone side as well.

Remove from heat and toss in the crock pot.

Set the crock pot on low. This will be delicious in anywhere from 6-8 hours. You really can't mess this up. I did this in the morning before work and came home to it looking like this.

I turned my crock pot on rice cooker mode, which basically starts boiling it like crazy. Then, I left the top open to help reduce the liquid. At this point, you can add your favorite thickener. I used some "Shake & Blend" flour, but cornstarch is quite acceptable. About a tablespoon, maybe two. I keep my eye on the crock pot during the reduction phase to make sure that everything is going as planned. While it's reducing, get out those green onion tops you have leftover and give them a nice chop.

Here, you can see that my sauce has reduced and thickened up a bit. This smells absolutely delicious at this point and I am ecstatic that I can finally get to eat it.

This is a dish that is best served over rice (jasmine in the picture below), you don't need anything else. This is such an easy meal, because it takes such little management and the payoff is amazing.

Leftover Lo Mein

Wow, this is a long post. I didn't realize that I took this many pictures during the process or that there were this many steps. Let me start by saying my mother showed up at my house with a random head of cabbage telling me it was a secret ingredient and I had to make a dish with it for the blog. I initially had planned to make corned beef and cabbage, but that was too expected and it's too far away from St. Patty's day. I've made this recipe before and used chinese cabbage, so it's an easy substitution. I call it left over lo mein because you can use pretty much anything you have in your refrigerator. You can put green peppers or squash or broccoli or green beans, any vegetable you have available will work. There is a fair amount of early prep work in this dish, but once you start cooking it's over fast. We want to make sure we have all our ingredients ready to go before the oil hits the pan. Oh yea, if you want it vegetarian, it's just as delicious without the chicken.

Ingredients:
For the Lo Mein:

• 1 chicken breast
• 1/2 of a medium onion
• 4 oz of sliced mushrooms
• 12 baby carrots
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/2 cup of cabbage
• handful of fresh cilantro
• 1/2 package of Lo Mein Noodles
• canola oil
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
  

For the Sauce:

• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 1.5 tsp of hoisin sauce
• 2 tsp of black bean sauce
• 1 tsp of fish sauce
• 1 tsp of honey
• 1.5 tsp of sriracha sauce
• 1 dash of chinese five spice powder
  

Step One, take a chicken breast, clean and trim it, then season liberally with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper on both sides.

Next, heat a pan on medium-high heat and pour a little oil in it. Add the chicken.

Flip the chicken over. Isn't that starting to look good?

Once the chicken is done cooking, remove it from the heat and let it sit for five minutes. You can skip ahead and start doing the vegetable prep work now, or you can wait those five minutes and then slice the chicken up into pieces.

Take about a dozen baby carrots, cut them in half horizontally and then dice them vertically. You should make 3-5 slices per carrot.

Take a quarter pound of mushrooms and slice them vertically. I cheated and bought my mushrooms pre-sliced but by putting them on the cutting board it looks like I did the work myself.

Chop up half of a medium sized onion in a very large dice. The pieces should be nickel to quarter size.

Take one clove of garlic and finely dice it.

Ahh, the beautiful head of cabbage that started this meal. Shred up about 1/3 of the head of cabbage.

This is how your vegetables should look now. The garlic is on top of the carrots because they will be going in at the same time. So will the onions and mushrooms, so it is ok if they mix too.

Take a handful of cilantro and chop that up as well. We will be needing that at the end of the dish.

Boil a pot of water and then toss in your Lo Mein noodles. This is what mine look like:

Follow the instructions on the package for cooking. Mine says it takes 5 minutes. This will give us time to get our sauce together.

Start with a quarter of a cup of dark soy sauce.

Add to that a teaspoon of honey.

Follow with a teaspoon of fish sauce.

Next add a teaspoon and a half of hoisin sauce. This is like a chinese BBQ sauce and is quite delicious.

Add two teaspoons of black bean sauce. Another delicious Asian condiment.

Add a dash of Chinese five spice powder.

This stuff is pretty strong, so I don't like to add to much as it can take over a dish. I put in about this much:

Oh, I bet you thought I was going to forget about the Sriracha sauce, didn't you? I told you I put this on everything when I introduced it to you in the bourbon chicken post and now it's back. If you haven't bought a bottle yet, kick yourself (It's amazing I get nothing from promoting this stuff, but Sriracha, if you are listening, send me a case!). Add a teaspoon and a half of the good stuff.

Are your five minutes up? If so, drain the noodles and set them to the side. Now we have everything prepped. The french call this mise en place, which literally means putting in place. Our spread pre-cooking:

This is where it gets interesting. We want to cook the food on the highest possible heat. We also need to keep it moving during the process, else we end up with burnt food. This is not that difficult of a process, unless you are trying to take pictures at the same time. Then it becomes overwhelming, but I survived. Place a wok on the highest setting your stove top goes. Once your pan is hot, add two tablespoons of oil. Immediately add the onions and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes.

Next add the cabbage. Continue to keep the food moving. Cook for another minute.

Add the carrots and garlic. The cabbage should be releasing their water which is instantly turning to steam on the hot wok making picture taking more difficult. This should not pose a problem for you.

After another minute, add the chicken and the noodles. Stir everything (just like you have been the whole time, right?).

Once all that is combined, go ahead and add the sauce. This should cook one to two minutes.

You can take it off the heat at that point and add the chopped cilantro.

Stir to combine everything. Grab your bottle of Sriracha (everyone deserves a little extra), a plate, a fork and get to eating. The table is optional.