I never knew there was such a thing as black garlic until I saw the burger contest episode of Bob’s Burgers. If you haven’t seen it, Bob enters a contest at a food festival and is pitted against his nemesis Jimmy Pesto, and a celebrity chef. Bob begins making a black garlic burger only to discover his son Gene forgot to pack the black garlic. He can’t leave the contest, so he sends the kids to retrieve the black garlic, and hijinks ensue. Bob eventually gets the black garlic and finishes his burger, but comes in second. The silver lining is the celebrity chef and a crowd of contest audience members shows up at the restaurant to try this amazing burger. Well, black garlic has been on my list of things I want to try ever since then, and now I finally get to with this recipe for Pork Ribs with Black Garlic Miso Glaze!
These baby back ribs get the ultimate upgrade with a robust and complex glaze that includes black garlic, miso, and dried mushrooms.
The Ingredients
As always, I started this off by looking through my kitchen for ingredients I already had. I was happy to find several of them. Things like fine sea salt, black pepper, water (of course), dry white wine, honey, sherry vinegar, and vegetable oil were all on hand.
My shopping list was short but it had a few things I couldn’t find locally. My regular grocery store had a 2.52-pound slab of ribs for $21.50. While I was there, I also found the shallots, thyme sprigs, and scallions.
I hoped to find the red miso on the international aisle but no luck. I had to order it, along with the black garlic and dried shiitake mushrooms. The black garlic and shiitake mushrooms had leftovers, but the red miso was a little short. I ordered a 6-ounce package and recommend a larger size—at least 8 ounces should do it.
The Process
Making these Pork Ribs with Black Garlic Miso Glaze began with some simple prep work. First, I covered a sheet pan with foil. Next, I placed the slab of ribs on the sheet pan and covered both sides with salt and pepper before placing them in the refrigerator.
Cooking the Ribs
The next day, I let the ribs sit on my kitchen counter for an hour so they could come up to room temperature. I began preheating my oven about 15 minutes before that hour was up. That gave me plenty of time to prepare the roasting pan by adding water, wine, black garlic, shallot, mushrooms, and thyme.
I should mention that my grocery store did not have three small shallots. All they had was rather large banana shallots. The largest one was 3.5 ounces, and I used it whole and unpeeled. The recipe calls for 4.5 ounces, but I wasn’t sure if I should cut into another shallot to add that extra ounce.
I added the room-temperature ribs, covered them with a sheet of parchment, and covered the roasting pan with some foil. Then I added the ribs to the preheated oven for 2.5 hours. They looked rather blah when I removed them, but they were nice and tender.
Making the Sauce
Now it was time for the sauce while the ribs cooled. I began by fishing out the seasonings from the roasting pan and double-staining the liquid. I like using my regular (and larger) mesh sieve then the smaller fine mesh sieve. The first strainer removes larger bits that would clog the smaller one. I also added the liquid to a fat separator because it was faster than skimming off the fat.
The sauce continued with adding sherry vinegar, honey, and red miso to my blender. This is where I discovered I didn’t buy quite enough. I looked up substitutes and found soy sauce was the most popular, but I decided to go with what I had and add soy sauce later if needed (it wasn’t).
By now the shallot and black garlic had cooled enough to handle, so I peeled them and threw them into the blender too. The fat had risen to the top of the reserved liquid so I poured that into the blender with everything else and blended it all. I ended up with 3.5 cups of blended liquid. Finally, the blended mixture went into a 2-quart pan to simmer and thicken while I finished the ribs.
Finishing the Ribs & Sauce
The slab of ribs had cooled, so I sliced it into individual ribs. The next step was to fry them in a cast iron pan. I used my 12-inch pan since it had the most room, but I misunderstood the instructions.
I thought it said to fry two at a time, but now I realize it was two batches That would have been 6 ribs per batch, though, and I’m not sure my pan would have held that many. At any rate, I put them in 2-3 at a time.
The sauce was simmering away while I fried the ribs. It wasn’t as thick as I would have liked after 15 minutes, so I let it keep simmering until it got to a consistency I liked. It was nice and thick by the time the ribs were ready to be plated and sauced.
Timing
This recipe listed lists active time and chilling time instead of prep and cooking like I’m used to. It also lists a total time of 16 hours 40 minutes, so I’ll use that for the time rating. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 5 minutes to season ribs
- 12 hours to chill
- 1 hour to rest
- 5 minutes to prep ribs and herbs
- 2 hours 30 minutes to roast ribs in oven
- 30 minutes to cool ribs
- 6 minutes to prep sauce (done while ribs cooled)
- 37 minutes to fry ribs and simmer sauce
- 16 hours 47 minutes total
Broken down in more familiar time listings it would be:
- Prep 10 minutes
- Cook 3 hours 7 minutes
- Cool 30 minutes
- Rest 1 hour
- Chill 12 hours
- 16 hours 47 minutes total
I surprised myself by not going way over the time listed thanks to my little misunderstanding of how many ribs to fry at a time. Yay!
