Sous vide pork ribs
I bought a belly of pork with the plan of cooking it sous vide a 62°C for 48 hours. The only belly that the butcher had was with bone in. As I like to butcher meat I went for it thinking that I would cook the ribs the way I usually do, blanching for an hour or so to tenderise then finishing them in the oven with a homemade BBQ sauce.
I decided to tackle the belly on Sunday. I removed the ribs and divided them into two pieces of 3 ribs each. I vacuum packed them to conserve them while I was attending to the belly itself. The goal was to brine the pork belly for 24 hours and start cooking it Monday. I had the thermal circulator running for a brisket that I had just started cooking was supposed to go on for 48 hours.
I cooked a lot on Saturday and I have to be honest, the kitchen was a bit of the mess and the prospect to add to it with a couple more pots and pans was too much for me, so when I turned my attention to the ribs I wasn’t sure anymore that I wanted to go through with them. I looked at ribs, looked at my circulator, looked at the ribs again and though, “why not?” I never cooked ribs sous vide before and cleaning is not so much of an issue with SV. So I decided that, that night I would have Chinese and that the ribs will go in the bath for 24 hours.
I put a rub together
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 ½ tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp garlic powder
I covered the ribs with the rub on both sides and added a drop of liquid smoke (very little, the stuff is quite potent), and vacuum packed three ribs per pouches and I then, placed the bags in the same bath that I was using for the brisket. It was running at 62°C. The next day, I came back from work and fished the bag off the water. To the touch I could tell that they were ready and perfectly tender. I seared them quickly in a hot skillet and ate the hell out of them.
I wouldn’t say that they were the best ribs I ever had, I had traditionally cooked ribs before that were equally tender and tasty. I think that this time the advantage was that, that night I was lazy and didn’t want to get into involved cooking, the circulator was running and I just dropped the ribs in there and forgot about them for 24 hours. Don’t get me wrong though, they were very, very, very good, Perfectly tender but more so, completely effortless.
English
French
