Easy Chinese sweet and sour spare ribs
Learn how to make incredible Chinese sweet and sour spare ribs at home. Who doesn’t like that appetizing flavour combination? It’s tangy, savoury, sweet and sour.
The sweet and sour spare ribs recipe is special to my heart as I learned to make it from my mom, who is the ultimate home cook. The dish is simple to make as it uses a handful of ingredients. Also, from start to finish, the dish can be at your table in less than 45 minutes making this a great weeknight meal.
Talk to me about taste and technique!
The spare ribs are first browned, followed by garlic and shallots to build flavour. Then a sauce made with soy sauce, sugar, white vinegar and water is added to the spare ribs and simmered. The outcome is an umami packed dish with appetizing sweet and sour flavours. A slurry is added at the end to thicken the sauce. Get ready to lick your fingers!
I did not add ketchup or tomato paste, as I wanted to keep my mom’s recipe as is. Feel free to add for additional sweetness and for that touch of red colour.
The dish pairs well with Jasmine scented rice.
What are spare ribs?
I used pork side ribs and asked the butcher to cut through the bone. Spare ribs are typically cut from the lower portion of the pig specifically the belly and breastbone. At many Chinese grocery stores in Toronto, you can buy a strip of the spare ribs or even precut.
What pan is best to use?
It is best to use a pan or pot with a lid as the spare ribs need to braise in the sauce. I used the Le Creuset 4.8 L Stainless Steel shallow braiser with lid, and it did the job well. Using a pan helps to brown the meat and aromatics, while the lid help to braise the ribs in the sauce.
This is a popular recipe amongst my family and I also did a demo of this dish at a Le Creuset store in Toronto in 2019. We had a long line up of shoppers who enjoyed the dish and took a printed copy of the recipe home with them.
Another home recipe from mine to yours. Happy cooking!
RECIPE
Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs
Learn how to make incredible Chinese style sweet and sour spare ribs at home with a sauce that is soy and vinegar based.
Ingredients
- 3 pounds spare ribs
- 6 cups (1500 ml) water
- ⅛ cup (30 ml) Shaoxing wine, or any Chinese cooking rice wine
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 1 /8 cup ginger, minced
- 1 (1/2 cup) stalk green onions including white parts, thinly sliced
- 2 tsp (10 ml) sesame oil
Sauce:
- ⅓ cup (80 ml) white vinegar
- ⅓ cup (80 ml) soy sauce
- ⅓ cup (80 ml) water
- 3 Tbsp. white sugar
- Avocado oil or oil of choice
- Salt and fresh ground black pepper, to season
Slurry:
- ⅓ cup (80 ml) water
- 1 heaping Tbsp. cornstarch
Instructions
Prepare the ribs
In a pot, add 6 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Add the pork ribs to the water and blanche for about 1 minute. Remove the ribs from the water and set aside.
Heat a large pan to medium-high and add oil. Add the spare ribs into the pan and spread them out evenly.
Brown and season each side of the ribs. Cook until the meat turns brown with no visibility of pink. About 3 minutes a side.
Turn the heat on high and add the Shaoxing wine, stir the ribs around, and turn off the heat when the alcohol has evaporated. About a minute.
Remove the pork into a bowl with the juices.
Cooking all ingredients
Turn the pan to medium-high, add oil and sauté the garlic, ginger, and shallots.
In a bowl, add soy sauce, water, white vinegar, and sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the sauce to the pan.
Add the pork back into the pan and mix. Add the lid to the pan, turn the heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, remove the lid.
In a small bowl, make a slurry of water and cornstarch and mix until the cornstarch has dissolved.
Turn the heat on high, and add the slurry to the pan. Mix the ribs and the sauce for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened.
Plate the ribs. Drizzle with sesame oil and top with green onions.
Recipe Notes
White wine can be used to substitute the rice wine.
For other easy weeknight Chinese recipes, check out:
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2 Comments
TLM
January 3, 2021 at 3:20 pmThese were delicious, such great flavour, we loved them! I didn’t see in the recipe when to add the ginger, so I added it at the same time as the garlic and shallots. 🙂
Mary Tang
January 3, 2021 at 3:56 pmThank you for the kind feedback. Oopsy, I missed adding in the ginger to the instructions. Thank you for noticing and the recipe has been fixed.
Happy cooking!