Nov 14, 2011: Darking Cooks cooking with Tea

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Mandatory Items: Prepare at least one savory recipe made with tea.

Variations allowed: Variations are encouraged. Feel free to use black, green, or white tea. Herbal teas (which are actually infusions, since they contain no tea leaves) are also allowed.

Eat4Fun - For this challenge, I used my own recipe.

Over the years, I've been working on my own Chinese BBQ sauce recipe. The following are pork spare ribs cooked in the sauce with the addition of tea.

Instead of baking, I use a method I call "braise-glaze". The ribs are braised for about an hour. As the sauce evaporates, it thickens to coat the coat the ribs.

The end result is a falling off the bone rib coated with a sweet Chinese bbq sauce.



Chinese Spare Ribs
1 Slab Spare Ribs, cleaned and trimmed to individual ribs.
1/2 C Ketchup
1/4 C Honey
1/4 C Maltose (or just use more honey)
1/4 C Hoisin Sauce
1/4 C Soy Sauce
1/4 C Onion, chopped
1/4 C Water
1 T Rice Wine
1 T Rice Wine Vinegar
1 T Brown Sugar
1 t Five Spice Powder
1 t Toasted Sesame Oil
2 Cloves Garlic, sliced
Optional: 2 to 6 tea bags (I used Jasmine Green Tea and an English Breakfast Tea)

Directions
1) Clean and trim the ribs.
2) Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large pot and heat.
Note: With the tea, you can add more or less depending upon how much tea flavor you want.
3) When the sauce has combined, add the ribs and stir to coat.
4) Simmer ribs, with the lid ajar, over low to medium low heat for about an hour - stir occasionally to ensure even coverage.
5) After an hour, you can turn up the heat to thicken the sauce, about 5 minutes. The ribs can be taken out for this step (if you feel the ribs are soft enough) or just leave in the pot to cook longer.