We had this dish in a Taiwanese fusion restaurant, Piglet & Co. The pork ribs’ texture, flavor, marination, was just RIGHT. Honestly, my reverse engineering’s recipe below does not even replicate Piglet & Co.’s pork rib..
Meat texture: Its meat was crispy on the outside, super, super soft and juicy in the inside. When picking the ribs up, they are not even falling apart.
Flavors: Piglet & Co.’s pork ribs also have very interesting flavors, Japanese pickle that’s sweet and sour, balancing the greasiness, spicy mayonnaise-like sauce gives a hint of sweetness, and the bubu arare, which is very crispy and gives extra surprising texture.
Marination: Lastly, each rib is marinated, rather than a whole rack of rib. Slices the whole rack and marinate takes some effort, and to find the right baking time so the meat is juicy but not breaking apart, is definitely hard.
RECIPE
- 1 rack of baby back ribs
- Dry Mix
- 5g salt
- 1tbsp black pepper
- 10g brown sugar
- 1tbsp garlic powder
- 1tbsp Szechuan peppercorn powder
- 1tbsp chili powder
- Wet Mix
- a few cloves of minced garlic
- 1-2tbsp soy sauce
- 1-2tbsp oyster sauce
- 1-2tbsp tomato sauce
- 1-2tbsp chu hou sauce
- 1-2tbsp honey or pineapple/kiwi chunks (need to blend later)
- (optional) spicy brown mustard
- decoration:
- spicy mayonnaise: Kewpie mayo + tomato sauce + cayenne pepper/shichimiไธๅณ็ฒ
- pickle (red)
- bubu arare (rice cracker) (I used Aburafu (fried wheat flour), texture not very good)
- minced chives
STEP 1: remove membrane of baby back ribs, cut a few slices across so marination can go deep into the ribs
STEP 2: put baby back ribs in water for ~30mins-1hr, then pour off water, dry off with paper towel
STEP 3: rub the dry spices against both sides of ribs including the sides
STEP 4 (OPTIONAL): marinate overnight
STEP 5: wrap ribs tightly with parchment paper (1st layer) and foil paper (2nd layer) and bake at 150C for 90mins or 275F for 1.5-2hrs (3-4 hours will be soft but too easy to de-bone and falling apart)
STEP 6: remove from oven, discard all the foil paper, parchment paper, and juice; raise oven temperature to 200C/400F, brush with wet sauce mix
STEP 7: broil for 10-15mins
STEP 8: decorate with bubu arare (rice cracker), minced chives, pickles, spicy mayonnaise
