Nam Yue Spare Ribs, 南乳排骨

One of the many dishes from my grandma I missed the most is Nam Yue Spare Ribs. It's a pork dish, deep/pan fried with a savoury, sweet taste. I tried making them last week. Although it didn't taste like the ones my grandma used to make (at all...) it was nevertheless very delicious! I used this recipe and I do highly recommend it.

I don't have wooden chopsticks so I usually use 2 satay skewers as my wooden chopsticks when I need to deep fry things. Super useful ok! No need to wash and hang it to dry. Just simply throw them away! I mean... how often do you deep fry food anyway right? But you gotta have the skillz though wtf. If you hold your regular chopsticks the wrong way, forget about this. You can use kitchen tongs but I'll explain below why a wooden stick is better.

Make sure your oil is hot, but not hot to the point that it's smoking otherwise your pork will burn or get charred before it even gets cooked.

One way to test is to put your wooden chopstick (or skewer in my case) in the oil. If you see bubbles floating up immediately from the stick, that's about right temperature. You can't do this if you're using a kitchen tong can you? Constantly check your meat. If it's browning very quickly, you probably need to reduce the fire.

Oh and another thing. Never use any type of olive oil to deep fry please - just because it's olive oil doesn't mean it's always 'healthier' to cook with. Olive oil has a relatively low smoking point, and it's not healthy to cook from oil which is smoking - some said it's carcinogenic. Virgin and extra virgin has even lower smoking point which is why it's not recommended to use them to even stir fry. Use vegetable or peanut oil when it comes to deep frying.

Next important thing to do - check your timing.

Obviously this one here is undercooked. NEVER EAT UNDERCOOKED PORK. 

I didn't know how long I should fry my pork as it wasn't mentioned in the recipe. "deep fry till golden brown" really doesn't mean anything. So I googled and found multiple answers. There's 3-4 minutes, there's 8-10 minutes. That is a huge difference when it comes to cooking meat like pork so I started off with 4 minutes. And this was what I got when I cut my pork in half - pink centre. 

So for the next piece, I tried 8 minutes. Still turned out to be a little bit pink. Then I tried 10 minutes and it was perfect. Pork was not overcooked, it was juicy and tender. Overcooked pork will be very tough and hard to chew which means bleeghh. 

Anyhow, my pork was quite a huge piece. If it's smaller, it probably didn't need 10 minutes. I can't give an exact cooking time, best way is to try it piece by piece. Unless you're not particular about the texture of your meat. I am. So I cooked my pork exactly 10 minutes and it was crunchy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside.

Yum!

I didn't have coriander leaves so I skipped that. I think it would have added a different flavour if I had it! Maybe next time. Baking soda basically helps in tenderising the meat. Don't overdose on baking soda and 5 spice powder as it will leave a bitter taste. And I didn't add that much water, just enough to give the marinade some volume so that all the meat is submerged in it. It's easier to mix the marinade (except water) in a bowl first, then pour all over the meat and give it a good stir.

I use a small pot to deep fry because that way, I wouldn't need to use that much of oil. But it also means I can only deep fry one piece at a time. It's slow but in a way, it's good because when you throw in too many pieces of meat into hot oil, the temperature of oil will drop rapidly and the meat will start sticking together and absorbing the oil.

I know this dish takes quite some effort to prepare but if you love spare ribs and Nam Yue, you'll love this! You can also substitute the meat with chicken.