Red Wine Braised Honey Pork Ribs

How fast has 2019 flown by?!! It has been a beautiful decade and an amazing year which I feel is culminating into the new decade with lots of promise and success. 2020 smells like wealth. It sounds like joy and laughter. It feels like going through challenges with grit, resilience and coming out the other side stronger, shinier and wiser. I have been looking back on the past decade and I am so happy about my growth and dumbfounded by the unexpected twist and turns of life and how everything just falls in place. I would have never guessed that me, a BCOM finance student would end the decade as the best Food Blogger in the country! I would have never guessed that the things I was so insecure about in 2010 about my body, would be my absolute favorite ones at the end of the decade. Everything just works out, and in hindsight, the most random twists make sense! I am so excited about the path ahead.

I know that paragraph is so not related to what today’s recipe is about lol, but now let us get into it. It is rainy and most of us are indoors, and it is a great time to go within and take stock. As we reflect on the past decade, please do so while chowing down my red wine braised honey pork ribs. For sure, the best you will ever have.

I made a dope vid to accompany the blog post. Do watch below, and subscribe!

PREP TIME: 1 DAY    COOK TIME: 2 1/2HRS        SERVES: 8

Ingredients

For the pork marinate:

1.5 kg of pork baby back ribs
5 tablespoons of soy sauce
5 tablespoons of honey
3 tablespoons of balsamic vibegar
3 tablespoons of grated ginger
1/2 a teaspoon of dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon of chili paste

For the seasoning:

1 tablespoon of paprika
1/2 tablespoon of cumin
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

For the bbq sauce:

1 small red onion, diced
5 cloves of garlic
1/4 teaspoonof chili
1/2 cup of red wine
3 tablespoons of honey
1 cup of ketchup

Method

Place the rib racks in your container. Mix all the marinate ingredients in a bowl then slather over the ribs. Marinate overnight or upto 3 days- refrigerated.

I bought my baby back rib rack from CarreFour at 800 bob per rack (a rack had about 12 ribs) but you can get some from city market at about the same price. City Market ribs will not be trimmed down so I prefer to get from CarreFour coz they will be trimmed down lessening the work for me. But if you want from city market- stall 38 – 0721216510/ 0727203037.

For this recipe, baby back ribs/spare ribs are best. The large ribs would also be fine, but baby back ribs are the ultimate best for this so make sure you get that.

Next day after my marination was done, i removed the ribs from the container and slice them up to individual ribs. Set aside the container together with those liquids as we will use them for later.

I transferred them into a bowl and added my spices for seasoning. I mixed them in and we were ready for the next step. I used just three spices as the marinate already had such full flavor which I did not want it overshadowed.

Place them on your baking tray. Remember that container that our rack was marinating in? It still has some remenants of the thyme, garlic honey etc and all that flavor will not go to waste. Mix the remaining chunks from the marination container with some dry red wine and pour this to the bottom of the tray (see process from the video from 5.20).

Make sure you used dry red wine tafadhali!!! I used a Merlot for this recipe however a carbanet sauvignon or a Shiraz would be perfect as well.

The ribs will braise in the red wine and absorb all the flavors as it cooks. I talked in-depth about this in the video so please make sure you watch. We are braising, not boiling and you will need just 1/2 a cup of wine to facilitate braising of 1 kg and a half of ribs. The braising liquid should just line the bottom of your tray, do not drown the ribs vhane!

Cover with foil, shiny side up. Let this braise for 2 hours at 150ºc.

As that is going, prep the bbq sauce: first in the onion, garlic, chili. Sautee until softened then add the ketchup, honey and wine. Mix it up,  simmer for 10-15 min then set aside. The red wine is a common flavor not between the ribs and the sauce and it will tie everything together. It is a main & mandatory ingredient. You can exclude it BUT remember that you will be making something entirely different, and it will not taste as mine does because you have removed a main ingredient.

After the ribs are done, take them out. They will be so damn tender at this point which I love! There will be some remnant liquid and rendered fat at the close of this stage (as the pic below shows), we shall not need that, so proceed to drain it.

Baste the ribs with the red wine bbq sauce we have just made, then pop them back in without the foil covering for 10 minutes then we will be done!!

Proceed to plate and garnish with some dania or some chives.

How sexy does this look though??!

They were not only so so tender, but they were also explosively flavorful! I loved how the sweet stickiness of the honey contrasted with the heat of the chili. I loved the warmth of the ginger and the herbiness of the thyme. I loved how the fullness of the cumin complimented the flavor of the pork and how the red wine added much welcome depth and complexity to this dish!

Perfection!

Pia sio kwa ubaya na no shade to anyone, instead of paying 1600 for 3 individual dry ribs at an eatout spot, si it makes more sense for you to spend 800 bob for a full rack of 12 and make yours at home with this bomb ass recipe? Just thinkabourrit!

Can’t wait for you guys to try this out!

Do pass by my channel, try this out, take a pick and tag me on any social media platform. Also tell me down below in the comment section how to have changed in the past decade and which unexpected turn was for the best in retrospect!

Cheers!

There are so many pork recipes that I would love you guys to explore and enjoy. There’s one in particular form a creator I enjoy. If you enjoyed my red wine braised honey pork ribs you will likely enjoy this honey baked ham recipe.

Get your downloadable recipe here :))

All content and images are copyright protected by

Do not copy in part or whole without giving due credit.