Korean-style Pork Spare Ribs

As a newly single lady, I have recently tackled some projects myself around the house that made me quite proud of my girl power. But there are some things — electrical work and A/V coordination — that I am happy to bribe my guy friends to help me get done. Recently I offered up some ribs as the bait and it worked like a charm. 🙂

Now, I have cooked spare ribs many ways — Italian-style or straight up BBQ — and I wanted to have something to blog about when I was done. I also like dreaming up new recipes just to see how they will turn out. Most Korean rib recipes are for beef short ribs and, while the flavor combinations in the recipes I looked up sounded mighty tasty, I had two racks of pork spare ribs defrosted. Time to improvise.

Korean-style Pork Spare Ribs

First, start by marinating your two racks of St. Louis spare ribs.

Marinade

Mix the below ingredients together and pour over your ribs; marinate at least 2 hours and up to overnight.

Ingredients

• 10 oz bottle Teriyaki sauce
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp chili-garlic sauce
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 2 minced garlic cloves

When you’re ready to get cooking, remove the ribs from the marinade and place them on your Green Egg (or other smoker) over indirect heat at around 400 degrees dome temp. Leave them be, spraying occasionally with apple juice, for an hour.

Pull them off when the first hour is up and wrap them in buttered foil spread with apricot jam. Return to the grill for another hour of cooking. During this time, you can make your sauce…

Korean BBQ Sauce

I decided to riff of my Easy BBQ sauce for this version. Just combine the following ingredients:

• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp molasses
• 1 tbsp yellow mustard
• 1 tbsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp five-spice grapeseed oil (or 1 tsp five-spice powder)
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tbsp Teriyaki sauce
• 1 small shallot, minced

When your hour in foil is up, unwrap the ribs and start slathering with your BBQ sauce…

After about 45 minutes or so, you should be ready to remove those lovelies and tent with foil for 5-10 minutes to let all the juices settle down. Then take a knife or cleaver to ’em…

And load your plate. I served these with a salad and french fries with a side of ketchup spiked with chili-garlic sauce. Spicy goodness, y’all — mmmm-mmmm!

Scotch Eggs for Dinner

Some time ago, I came across the brilliant idea of Scotch Eggs on Griffin’s Grub. He had taken the traditional preparation of boiled egg encased on lovely breakfast sausage and then cooked it on his Big Green Egg (versus breading and frying it.) I thought it was brilliance.At various times, I had intentions of cooking up some for a weekend breakfast or special brunch but somehow never got around to it. And then one night I was trying to come up with a dinner idea. I’m a big fan of eggs for dinner so I was considering a fritatta but then it occurred to me that Scotch Eggs could fit the bill nicely.

Scotch Eggs

Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs sausage
• 6 eggs
• BBQ sauce

Start by boiling and cooling your eggs. (The colder you get them, the easier they are to peel.)

For the sausage, I used some spicy chicken sausage versus breakfast sausage.

Most grocery stores these days sell a pretty wide variety of fresh sausage in the meat case. Pick out one that sounds good to you, use some kitchen scissors to open them up, and put the sausage in a bowl. Encase each egg evenly with sausage and place on a plate.

You will want to fire up your Big Green Egg (or smoker or oven) to 350 degrees and set up for indirect heat. When your temp is steady, load these beauties in like so…

And leave them be for about 30 minutes or so. You can baste with BBQ sauce halfway through if you like. (Or just serve drizzle the BBQ sauce at the end.) When they look done, take them off the grill.

Serve one per person, sliced and plated with some yummy sides.

These were a hit at my house. Even the boy — picky eater that he is — tried one. Next time you are looking for dinner (or breakfast or brunch) inspiration, give them a try.