BBQ Cooking - Week 6: Slow Cooked Beef Chuck Ribs+Roasted Whole Piglet-Chinese Wedding Style!

This was the last class for the BBQ cooking course. We made Slow Cooked Beef Chuck Ribs, Grilled Back Ribs with Tunnel Style Sweet and Hot Sauce, Grilled Hot Banana Peppers. My group job was to remove the seeds from a couple hundred banana peppers and then stuff them with rice. My poor bare hands were coated with capsaicin and I could still feel the burning sensations even 3 days after the exposure. Believe me, I tried everything I can to remove those bugger capsaicin molecules, including washing my hands with olive oil and even a small amount of acetone from the lab. Nothing worked. So if you ever have to do the same task, make sure that you wear a pair of gloves! Over all, this is a great course and I enjoyed it a lot! I learned exactly what I came here for, new cooking techniques that involve a BBQ. 

As it was the final class, our chef also showed us something extra -- a crispy baby pig that is commonly served at Cantonese Chinese weddings. 

For the baby pig, the chef first roasted it slowly in the oven at 300F. Once it's fully cooked after about 3hr, he put it on the rack over a large wok, and poured really hot oil all over its body. Literally, the pig was burned and the skin just popped open to become crispy. (sorry about the graphic description)

Slow Cooked Beef Chuck Ribs

Ingredients

4 bone rack beef chuck ribs (chuck ribs are the first 4 ribs of the animal)

1 onion, chopped

12 shallots, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

6 garlic

500 mL red wine

1 L beef stock

1 L chicken stock

200 mL crushed tomatoes

1 bay leaf

Methods

1. rub chuck ribs with general some rub mixture (basically you can make a dry rub using whatever spices you want, i.e. chilli powder, garlic powder, curry powder, peppercorn, etc)

2. in a pan, heat some oil to brown the ribs

3. add onion/celery/carrot/shallot/garlic

4. add red wine and stock, simmer for a few minutes

5. add crushed tomatoes, bring the braising pan to the oven

6. slow cook the meat at 325F for about 2 hrs, take the meat out to rest, keep cooking the liquid to reduce it to a thick sauce

BBQ-Week 1: Korean Ribs and Grilled Asparagus!

Summer is finally here! And you know what that means, time to light the BBQ! To me, grilling chunks of meat in front of a BBQ has always seemed like a guy's job. But after hearing many good things about this particular BBQ cooking class, I decided to give a try. I had no prior experience of BBQ cooking besides grilling a couple burgers and buns for a quick dinner, so a lot of new techniques are ahead of me to learn! Unlike all my other classes, students work in teams in this one and we are working in a special lab, equipped with industrial food prep tools and gadgets. In this first class, we made Grilled China Town Style Beef Short Ribs (really, it's more Korean than Chinese) and Balsamic Grilled Asparagus. 

Ingredients

1.5 lb cross cut short ribs, quarter inch thick

salt/pepper to taste

Marinade: 

1 cup pineapple juice

60 g ginger grated

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 Thai chili

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1 tsp seasame oil

Methods

1. combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and whisk

2. save 1/4 of the marinade for basting later

3. marinade the ribs for about 3hr

4. grill on medium heat, and use the 1/4 marinade to baste

* to get nice grilling marks on the meat, grill them 45 degrees to the grill mark first, then turn the rib 90 degrees (perpendicular to the initial direction)

* if you don't have a BBQ, you can just cook the ribs in a non-stick pan or in the oven using broiling for a few minutes 

French - Week 2: beef stew!

Week 2. 
During this week's class, Chef Klaus demonstrated 3 dishes: crêpe suzette, estouffade de boeuf (beef stew), and batonnets de carottes et navets (glazed carrots and turnips). We made our own beef stew,  as well as the glazed vegetable side dish. The glazed vegetables were fairly easy to make. You start by caramelizing sugar in the pan (dry heat, no water). Then you add the blanched vegetables to the pan, coat them with the caramelized sugar and 1 tbs of melted butter. 

For the  beef stew, our recipe calls for 1 kg of meat. But due to the small class size, we all got a bit of extra of ingredients. I got a HUMONGOUS piece of meat, which probably weighed 2 kg just by eye-balling it! The techniques used to make the stew are pretty standard for beef stews. Basically, you brown the tough meat in the pan first and then finish cooking it in the stock in  the oven. I like this recipe because the nice touch added by the olives, which made the entire dish very French. 

Ingredients
2 kg of beef shoulder meat, cubed
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 big onion (the meat to onion ratio should be around 1:1)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 package of mushrooms, sliced
1/4 can of black olives
1tbs olive oil
1.5 cups of red wine
2.5 cups of demi-glace (demi-glace is made of half beef stock and half Espagnole sauce)
some flour for dusting the meat
salt/pepper

Methods
1. Preheat oven to 375 ºF
2. Cut the beef into cubes, dust them with flour. Make sure you remove all the chewy silver skins in the meat. 
3. Heat the olive oil in pan. Add beef cubes for browning. 
4. Set the meat aside in a casserole and drain off the excess fat. 
5. Fry up bacon in the pan until crispy. 
6. Sweat onion, garlic, mushroom and olives.
7. Add red wine and demi-glace. Remember to deglaze the bottom of the pan, so that you will keep all the flavour from the fond. 
8. Adjust seasoning with salt/pepper.
9. Pour everything into the casserole, continue cooking in the oven (covered) for another 2.5 hrs. 


 The final product was served with the glazed root vegetables made in class, stir-fried rice, and the leafy Chinese vegetable, Jie Lan. (I think its English name is Chinese Kale? Correct me if I am wrong.) 

Happy Sunday!