How much does taste have to do with whether you make and remake a recipe? The Accidental Locavore tired a spare rib recipe from Bon Appétit recently, mostly because it had the trendy 2013 replacement for sriracha — gochujang. Here’s the recipe, it’s pretty simple, but needs some advance planning for marinating and almost two hours in the oven. See my notes to see if this will make it into the regular rotation.
- ½ cup gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
- 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
- Kosher salt
- 3 pounds baby back pork ribs, cut into individual ribs
- Sesame seeds for garnish
In a small bowl, whisk gochujang, brown sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, oil and salt until smooth.
Toss ribs with half of the marinade in a 13×9″ baking dish. Cover ribs with foil and chill at least 4 hours. Set aside remaining marinade.
Preheat oven to 350°. Bake ribs, covered, until meat is tender, about 1 hour. Uncover and increase oven temperature to 450°. Roast, turning occasionally and brushing with reserved marinade during last 5 minutes, until ribs are deeply browned, glazed, and fork-tender, 40—45 minutes longer.
My verdict: These were good, tender, sticky and tasty. I think the glaze/marinade could use a little tweaking to make it more interesting. I used hot sesame oil since I couldn’t find the regular stuff, so they were fairly spicy. Possibly reverting to sriracha instead of the gochujang (but using a bit less) would make it tastier (if less trendy). Even though they’re almost invisible in the photo, the addition of sesame seeds as a garnish was good because it added a nice little crunch. My biggest complaint about these ribs? Clean up! After an overnight soak, I’m still scrubbing hard to get the burnt-on glaze off the dish. A couple of simple solutions? Aluminum foil pan (toss it — no clean up) or possibly a quick spray of Pam.
