Main Ingredients:
Pork Ribs: several pieces.
Auxiliary Ingredients:
Star Anise: appropriate amount; Bay Leaves: appropriate amount; Dried Tangerine Peel: appropriate amount.
Seasonings:
Salt: appropriate amount; Soy Sauce: appropriate amount; Yellow Rock Sugar: appropriate amount; Baijiu (Chinese white liquor): appropriate amount.
Taste: Salty and Fragrant; Cooking Method: Pickling; Time: Several Days; Difficulty: Advanced.
Detailed Steps for Cooking Chinese Style Preserved Pork Ribs
Wash the star anise, bay leaves, and dried tangerine peel with hot water. Soaking them for a while can make them cleaner and more flavorful.
After draining the water, add yellow rock sugar. You can use white sugar or other types of sugar, but I prefer yellow rock sugar.
Pour in soy sauce until it covers the seasonings. The amount of seasonings and soy sauce depends on how much preserved meat you want to make. I usually make a large amount of seasoning and use it for several batches of preserved meat, so the amount is relatively large.
Cover with plastic wrap. This step should be done one or two days before pickling the meat, so that the flavor of the star anise and other seasonings can be fully released.
Do not wash the pork ribs. Spray some baijiu on them first, then evenly apply salt. The amount of salt should be slightly more than what you would use for stir-frying, but not too much unless you want it to be very salty.
After rubbing the salt evenly, pour in the soaked soy sauce. Stir the soy sauce and seasonings together before pouring, as the sugar will sink to the bottom after melting. The picture shows preserved meat instead of pork ribs, as I forgot to take a picture of the pork ribs.
After mixing the soy sauce evenly, put the pork ribs in a dish to pickle. I usually pickle them for one day, from the morning after I buy the meat until the next morning. Remember to turn them over during the pickling process.
After pickling for one day, hang the pork ribs outside. Before making them, check the weather forecast to ensure that it will be sunny for at least a week and the temperature is low. In my area, the period around the winter solstice is suitable, with a north wind, temperatures ranging from three to ten degrees Celsius, and frost. This kind of weather is not a concern for the meat to spoil and it dries easily.
The north wind makes the meat dry quickly. On the first and second days when I hung the meat, the wind was strong and the sun was out for half a day, which was not a problem as the moisture dried quickly. The fragrance will come out after being exposed to the sun for a while.
Expose to the sun for at least a week until the fatty part of the meat becomes transparent and the lean part becomes hard.
