Asian-Style Braised Short Ribs

It's Sunday. If you're a regular here, you're looking for my weekly meal plan. Sorry, no meal plan today friends. As a consolation prize, I am offering this fabulous Asian-Style Braised Short Rib recipe.



I was away all weekend. My sister had a baby on Friday morning! In my rush to load the car and the kids and get to my sister and the baby as quickly as safely possible, I am proud to say that I remembered my recipes and coupons and everything that I would need to make a meal plan and grocery list while away from home. But... I never got to it. I spent the weekend having fun with my family, cooking out, hanging by the campfire, and oh yeah....holding my beautiful new baby niece!



I also got to spend a whole afternoon with my grandparents on Saturday. It's been too long since I've had the chance to do this. My grandma has been "under the weather" for the last few weeks. So on Saturday, I hauled the ingredients for the short ribs over to her house, put my toddler down for a nap in the guest room, sent my oldest outside with my grandpa to cruise the lawn and feed the calves, and I settled into the kitchen for 3 hours to cook for and visit with my grandma. I wonder how many meals she's cooked for me? Too many to count. It was definitely my turn.

Speaking of my Grandma Shirley, here she is holding her 13th great-grandchild. That's my little one on the left and that's new big sister, Ella (soon to be 2) on the right, looking on. What a precious moment!



Now that I've shared a couple pics from my brag book, let's take another look at these Asian-Style Braised Short Ribs. I have wanted to try these for a long time! Recently, when I found myself with with a number of packages of short ribs from last year's crop of beef, I ended up trying The Pioneer Woman's Short Ribs. I was not disappointed, but I still wanted to try them Asian-style. I ended up going with a recipe by Emeril, that I found on The Food Network site. Served over Jasmin rice and garnished with green onion and grated orange peel, this dish plated beautifully, was absolutely full of flavor, and so delicious!



Here are my short ribs. The recipe calls for 5 lbs. cut into 4 ounce portions. This was definitely more than 5 lbs. Maybe closer to 7? And they were not cut into 4 oz. portions.



If you've never cooked with short ribs before, then you're probably observing that they are NOT a lean cut of beef. That's okay. All of that fat allows for a really tender, flavorful finishes product if cooked properly. I placed all them in a large roasting pan.



Before I did anything else, I grabbed for an orange. The recipe calls for fresh orange juice in the sauce and orange zest on top for the garnish. I grated the orange first, then put the zest in a baggie and refrigerated it until needed.



Then I juiced the orange for the sauce. I found my great-grandma's orange juicer in the far reaches of one of my grandma's kitchen drawers. It's so pretty! I have fond memories of my great-grandma (who worked in an orange grove) bent over this juicer, squeezing my fresh breakfast OJ when I visited her in Florida. Nice lil' trip down memory lane. Apparently, my memory didn't serve me all that well...I forgot that you're supposed to put the juicer on top of a cup first and let the juice pour down through the HOLES in the bottom. I totally did this on a cutting board and had juice running everywhere! Ooops.



Once the orange is juiced, then you can combine the juice with all of the other sauce ingredients: soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic, lemon grass, ginger, brown sugar, sliced green onion (just the white part), crushed red pepper, and water.



Pour the sauce over the short ribs. They were supposed to be submerged (or at least close). Mine weren't. I did flip them halfway through the cooking process so that both sides were submerged for half of the time. COVER and bake at 350 degrees for 3-4 hours, until the meat is "fall off the bone" tender.



I don't have any pictures of the meat coming out of the oven. I had to leave. My other sister (the one whom didn't just give birth, of course) was hostessing a cookout at her house and I had the meat, the salad, and the dessert. I assigned my grandpa the task of taking the ribs out of the oven and my grandma separated the short ribs from the sauce. Both went into the refrigerator overnight. Remember that short ribs have lot of fat? As they cook, that fat melts and melds with the sauce. If you chill the sauce overnight, it is much easier to skim the fat from the sauce. That's just what I did when I returned to my grandparent's house late this morning: I removed great chunks of fat that had risen to the top of the sauce.



The sauce needs to reduce to 2 cups (or a little less), so add 1/4 cup of Hoisin sauce and boil it down.



While the sauce reduced, I trimmed the meat out of those short ribs. I'm not sure how Emeril plated these...if he just placed the full short rib over the rice, bone and fat and all...but to me, all of that waste is a hindrance when you're trying to eat. I just wanted the edible part of the beef. My grandma had pulled out the bones before she put them in the refrigerator the night before, so I just needed to trim off the fat. The container pictured on the left holds all of the fat. The roasting pan on the right is where I placed all of that delicious, tender beef.



Once the sauce is reduced, pour it through a strainer, then add in a couple of tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice.



Now pour the sauce over the meat. Stir it around a bit, to coat.



Pop the short ribs back into a pre-heated 425 degree oven and bake for 10-15 minutes more until the ribs are heated through and slightly glazed.



Serve over Jasmin rice, topped with sliced green onion and orange zest. Be sure to ladle some of that amazing sauce over the top too! Love this sauce!

Now you may be thinking, "This is the meal she made for her ailing granny!?" Yep. It is. Why? Because I know that my grandma is like me...not picky. Plus, also like me, she has an adventurous pallet. PLUS, we have an abundance of short ribs. I sat next to her today at Sunday dinner and I know that she enjoyed this just as much as I did. We weren't the only fans...my test group consisted of: both of my parents, my daughters and one of my nieces, and an uncle that stopped by just as we were finishing up. Rave reviews from everyone...except for my picky grandpa, who wouldn't even try one bite. Oh well. He's never eaten a rib in his life, I didn't really expect him to start today.



Asian-Style Braised Short Ribs Adapted from a recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2004 original recipe found HERE.

Ingredients
•5-7 pounds beef short ribs, (ideally, but not necessarily) cut into 4-ounce portions
•1 cup soy sauce
•1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
•3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
•1 (5-inch) stalk lemongrass, halved and smashed
•1 tablespoon peeled and minced ginger
•1/2 cup light brown sugar
•1 quart water
•1/2 cup sliced green onion bottoms, white part only
•3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
•1/4 cup fresh orange juice
•1/4 cup hoisin sauce
•2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
•Jasmine Rice, for serving
•2 tablespoons finely grated orange rind, for serving
•Sliced green onion tops, optional for garnish

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large roasting pan or Dutch oven, combine the short ribs, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, brown sugar, water, green onion bottoms, crushed red pepper, and orange juice. Make sure that the stockpot is deep enough so that the short ribs are submerged in the liquid.

Bake the short ribs, covered, for 3-4 hours, or until the meat is tender and falling off the bones. Remove the short ribs from the braising liquid and cover. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Reserve the braising liquid. Refrigerate to bring fat to the top.Drain the fat off of the cooking liquid and discard. Place the remaining braising juices in a saucepan with 1/4 cup of the hoisin sauce and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the liquid until only about 2 cups remain. Strain through a fine-meshed strainer, discarding the solids. Stir in the lemon juice.

Remove the rib meat from the bone and trim additional fat. Return the short ribs and the reduced sauce to the roasting pan or Dutch oven, coating the short ribs well with the sauce. Bake for 10-15 minutes in a pre-heated 425 degree oven, until the short ribs are heated through and slightly glazed. Serve hot over jasmine rice. Season each portion with the orange zest and garnish with the green onions if desired.