I’ll cut right to the chase. I couldn’t find the courage to eat a raw egg yolk. If egg yolk is the reason you’re reading about this dish, then I understand we must go our separate ways. If you’re here for the pork ribs, then read on my friend!
This recipe contains two ingredients that I had never cooked with before: kimchi and gochujang. Kimchi is made of fermented and spiced vegetables, popular in Korean cuisine. Gochujang is a spicy paste, similar in texture to tomato paste, but much hotter, also a Korean ingredient. It took a little time to find both of them, but I eventually did at Whole Foods. (An Asian-food market would have worked too, but the nearest one is a little too far of a drive.)
Like most other braised meat recipes, the pork ribs are first spiced and seared to get some good color on the meat and render fat at the bottom of the pot. That fat is then used to cook chopped garlic, fresh ginger, scallions and the gochujang paste. Then the meat is added back to the pot, along with kimchi and water, the braising liquid. Everything is simmered for roughly 3 hours on the stove until the meat is nearly falling off the rib bones.
For all of the intensity of kimchi and gochujang, I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of flavor in this dish. It felt like the spices were too mild to really make an impression. Which surprised me! I tasted a bit of both ingredients before adding them to the pot, just to see what they were like, and my first reaction was to worry that they were too spicy. I was genuinely concerned that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the heat. But instead the opposite was true. My best guess is that there wasn’t enough gochujang, and possibly, some of the water could be subbed for broth. I’m still not certain that would do the trick, though.
The real winner, in my opinion, was Alison’s topping suggestion for an apple-radish mixture. Rice vinegar, apples, radishes, and red pepper flakes -- four ingredients I would not have thought to put together -- created a tangy, crunchy companion for the tender pork. I found myself just eating the topping alone, it was that good. I made Melissa Clark’s coconut rice and toasted sesame seeds to complete the meal.
Similar to the Pork and Red Chile Stew, Jordan was a huge fan. He ate all of the leftovers for four straight lunches without a single complaint. I would prefer to put this one in the “Good To Try, But Won’t Make Again” pile, but the jury's still out on whether or not Jordan will be okay with that decision.
29 recipes cooked, 196 to go.
