Pork Ribs Adobo

Add pork ribs to a large sealable bag or bowl.

In a bowl, combine soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, peppercorns, onion, bay leaves, and salt. Pour this mixture into the sealable bag, and marinate 24 hours, preferably, but you can probably get away with 4 hours. At some point in time, massage the marinade into the ribs.

When you are ready to cook, add ribs and marinade into a Dutch oven, or something that can hold all of the ribs. Cook on the stove on low heat for about 4 hours. The ribs should be close to fall apart tender. Once you hit that stage, preheat oven to 425ºF.

Place however many ribs you want onto a baking sheet and into the heated oven. Cook for about 10 minutes or until nicely crisp on the outside.

Take some of the cooked marinade and cook on medium-high heat on the stove. Bring to a boil, then place in a fat strainer if you have one. The ribs do give off a good amount of fat so you will want to remove as much as possible. (Keep in mind you can make this a day ahead, store the ribs separately from the cooked marinade, then the next day, when the fat has solidified, scoop off and discard, keeping just the lean marinade.)

Once the ribs have gotten nice and crisp on the outside, remove and pour cooked marinade over. Plate and serve.

You not only get fall-apart pork, but the aroma is to die for. It’s that vinegar, mixed with the garlic that just perfumes that pork. It is super hard not to love, so much that I heard my boys moaning a bit, and my wife and daughter just kept their heads down, not saying a word and just scooping forks and spoons of this stuff into their mouths. Yep, it’s that good.