Smoked Char Siu Ribs

Combination-cooked smoked Char Siu style ribs, taking advantage of both smoking and sous vide.

Originally Posted: Sept. 15, 2023

Total Time: 23.5 hours – 26 hours

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Intro

The Cook-Off

Long story short, I got invited to a rib cook-off for a friend’s kid’s first birthday, and had to think of what kind of ribs I wanted to make to wow people. Decided to do something I’d never done before, and went for a Char Siu flavor profile on the ribs. So here we go: Smoked Char Siu Ribs.

The Research

Sous Vide Ribs

I wanted to use a combination cooking method of both smoking and sous vide. I’ve done sous vide ribs many times before, and I’ve played around with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s chart over the years. He did time and temperature tests that resulted in a wide variety of textures, from the more traditional chewy and meaty, to fall-off-the-bone ribs more similar to braised meat.

Sous Vide Smoked Ribs

However, in the past I’ve only finished sous vide ribs in the oven, or sometimes on a griddle or grill. I wanted to find a recipe that involved sous vide and a smoker, and after some Googling I found this recipe from Salt Pepper Skillet. I based my times and temperatures mainly on the recipe, but I added some extra smoke time at the beginning to give my ribs a nice smoke ring and some smoke flavor before they went into the sous vide bag, and then the plan was to lacquer the ribs with sauce on the smoker at the end.

Smoked Char Siu Pork

For the Char Siu flavor profile, I did some Googling and found a decent method in this recipe from Serious Eats, using pork shoulder and glazing it on the smoker. I also added some ingredients I tend to have around, like dark soy sauce and chile crisp oil.

Putting It All Together

The original recipe was for an 7lb. pork shoulder, and since I had four racks of ribs that were about 4lbs each, I doubled the recipe for both the rub and the sauce to cover 16lbs of meat. It was just barely enough rub, so maybe make some extra (I’ve bumped up the ingredient amounts for the rub below). Or if you’re only doing one rack of ribs, maybe make half the amount.

Note: I think this rub and sauce could also be good on smoked chicken or smoked salmon, but haven’t tried either yet.

Ingredients

Note: for about 8lbs. of meat, or about two racks of ribs.

Sauce

• 2/3 cup (~158mL) Hoisin Sauce
• ½ cup (~118mL) Honey
• ½ cup (~118mL) Soy Sauce or Tamari
• 1/3 (~79mL) cup Dry Sherry
  • Note: I used homemade garlic mead, you could also probably just use Shaoxing cooking wine or rice wine.
• 2 tsp. (10g) Chinese Five-Spice
• 1/3 cup (~79mL) Dark Soy Sauce
  • Note: This is a specific type of very strong soy sauce; I like to say it’s like the Balsamic reduction of soy sauces. It’s also what gives Pad See Ew noodles its flavor. I like Lee Kum Kee Premium Dark Soy Sauce personally.
• 1/3 cup (~118mL) Chile Oil
• Corn starch slurry (as needed, for thickening)

Rub

• 2.5 Tbsp. (~37.5g) Chinese Five-Spice
• 2 Tbsp. (~27.5g) Brown Sugar, or Turbinado Sugar, or whatever you got
• 2 Tbsp. (~27.5g) Kosher Salt

Meat

• 2 racks (about 8lbs., or about 4kg) St. Louis style pork ribs

Garnish

• Toasted sesame seeds
• Green onions

Equipment

• Sous vide circulator
  • I like Anova circulators, but every few years they come out with a new model with a new diameter. If you want to make a setup like below, make sure you measure your circulator and use a hole saw that closely matches it.
• Vacuum sealer
  • Cheap-ish ones work great. I use an older model of Foodsaver, like one of the $80 ones.
• Sous vide basin
  • I built a custom one using a short, flat Coleman cooler, a hole saw kit, and a caliper to make sure I was drilling the right sized hole. I use the same setup in my brisket.
• Smoker
  • I use a Recteq RT-700, which I’m very happy with
• Sauce pan or pot, moderately high-walled

Written Instructions

Total Time: 23.6 – 26 hours

Setup and Preliminary Smoke

Preheat smoker to 250°F (121°C). Remove membrane from bottom of ribs if that hasn’t already been done, using a paring knife to help peel a corner off and then using a paper tower to grip and pull it. Mix spice blend and coat ribs well with the blend.

Once smoker reaches temp., smoke ribs for about 2 hours just to get a smoke ring and some initial smoke flavor. Honestly, this step is optional, since the smoke ring is mainly cosmetic (I did get complimented on mine), and finishing the ribs in the smoker should also impart plenty of smoke flavor. I do want to point out that I haven’t tried skipping this step yet to test a difference, but at the end the ribs were the perfect texture and juiciness.

While ribs are in smoker (if you’ve chosen to do that step), preheat sous vide setup to 148°F (64.5°C). Then mix the Char Siu cooking liquid/sauce.

Sous Vide

Take ribs off the smoker and place in several vacuum seal bags. Add a little of the sauce to each bag. Since we’re doing sous vide here, you won’t need too much per bag, maybe somewhere between ½ cup to 1 cup. I just kinda eyeballed it. Reserve the rest of the sauce and keep it in the fridge overnight.

Place in sous vide setup and cook for 20 – 22 hours.

Sauce and Finish Smoke

The next day, preheat your smoker again to 250°F (121°C). Open the sous vide bags and pour as much of the cooking liquid as you can from each bag into a sauce pan. Add the reserved portion of the sauce from the fridge to this as well, and heat on medium to medium-high heat.

Note: Watch out for boil-overs here, because honey expands A LOT when heated (I’ve had this be an issue while making mead in the past). Let everything simmer for a while, stirring occasionally, and add as much corn starch as it takes to thicken.

While your sauce is heating and thickening, pat your ribs dry and place them back on the preheated smoker. Try and thicken your sauce (without having a boil-over) so that you can lacquer your ribs with the sauce roughly every 30 minutes. I think I got about 3 or 4 coatings in throughout the last 2 hours of cook-time.

Allow the ribs to rest for about 30 minutes before cutting. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and green onions, and serve.

And finally, win the rib cook-off and get a cool little pig trophy (pic to be included once Cam remembers to bring it to me).