BBQ Pork Ribs, Chinese Style, and Pickled Green Onions

Today’s the day! Emeril’s Kicked-Up Sandwiches is released and for sale! Now you can get a copy into your own hot little hands and finish the cook-along with us! The mystery is over–your new kitchen favorite awaits you.

In continuing with my portion of the cook-along, this time I decided to stir things up a bit with something that requires some patience. There isn’t a lot of hands-on work required, but you better plan ahead or you won’t be having dinner tonight.

I’m pretty sure I’ve only made ribs a couple times, and most likely in the slow cooker, always the boneless variety. I certainly don’t recall grilling them and we don’t have a smoker, which would most definitely yield some amazing ribs, but I have not been able to justify the purchase yet financially. When I saw that Emeril’s ribs were to be cooked entirely in the oven, I knew I had to try them. I could manage this.

The sauce comes together in minutes and once you have the ribs bathing in it, it only takes a few more minutes to make the pickling solution for the green onions. I found the ingredients list a tad vague in how much green onions exactly. It stated 4 bunches, but how big is a bunch? I used a quart-sized Mason jar for the pickling and could not have fit more than 2 bunches from the grocery store in it, even with them trimmed to size. That’s another thing, though. Pickling only works if the food is immersed entirely in the solution; if you cut the onions down to 5 inches, as recommended, more than half of their length will stand outside of the brine. I pushed them down and squished them into it, but I couldn’t do that all initially; I had to eat some before there was room for squishing. I’m not complaining. The pickled green onions were delicious–spicy, sweet, sour–a blend that I wasn’t so sure about but found to be the perfect foil to the BBQ pork ribs.

Another bit of confusion came in the ribs themselves. The recipe calls for country style ribs, which are boneless in my experience, but the directions include removing the meat from the bones after cooking. I also suspect the cook time may have been for ribs on the bone, as my meat ended up a tad drier than I anticipated. I rolled with the punches, though, and attempted to shred them up a bit before tossing in the remaining reserved marinade (note: the ribs will not shred in the KitchenAid like chicken breast does). They soaked up the marinade just fine.

Despite a couple stumbles, this made for a fabulous meal. The kids couldn’t get enough of the ribs and the leftovers heated up well–which is fortunate since my husband was not home the night I made this. There was enough for about 8 servings of 3 sliders each. You could upgrade the buns to larger potato rolls, but the Hawaiian Sweet Rolls complemented everything so nicely that I wouldn’t bother.

To find out what the other cook-along bloggers think of the recipes they’re trying out, follow #SeriousSandwich on Twitter, or check out their links below:

• 30A EATS
• Between Slices
• Big Dew the Firehouse Chef
• Chef R3llik
• A Cook and Her Books
• Cooking in Stilettos
• Culicurious
• Family Foodie
• Farmgirl Gourmet
• Food Hunter’s Guide
• Kwistin’s Favorites
• Mangoes and Chutney
• Mario Cooks
• Maroc Mama
• My Cup of Creativitea
• My Royal Kitchen
• Pages Stuck Together
• Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Poet in the Pantry
• Rhubarb and Honey
• Solid Gold Eats

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone, based upon my personal experience. Morrow Cookbooks provided me with a Cookalong Kit including an advance copy of Emeril’s Kicked-Up Sandwiches. In addition, upon completion of the #SeriousSandwich cookalong, all participants will receive a small grocery reimbursement and a complete library of Emeril Cookbooks.