Outdoor reared pork ribs marinated in a yummy Korean sauce.

Even though I sell a lot of outdoor reared pork ribs in my daily job at Tesco I don't recall ever cooking any. Well they are cheap and so I decided to buy myself a decent amount and looked out for a marinade sauce that wasn't majorly hot. Amongst the array of sauces and marinades I found this little beauty from Encona Taste Explorers. Given the generous amount of ribs I had provided for myself I went for two jars. See their great Twitter link @EnconaOfficial and Econa Facebook page

I chopped the ribs into smaller bite-size bits and poured the jars of marinade over the lot. I rubbed in the marinade and thoroughly coated the meat. Then the ribs in the bowl were covered in cling film and left in the fridge to marinade for almost two days.

ribs before marinade

In cooking the smoky/spicy flavoured ribs I pre-heated my oven to gas mark six for ten minutes, transferred the ribs to a casserole dish and covered it in silver foil. They cooked at this heat for half an hour and then I turned the heat down to four. I left the ribs cooking on this relatively low heat for a further three hours, occasionally taking them out and turning their delicious porkiness over in the marinade. For the last half hour I added a few slabs of dark chocolate to the cooking pork for a hit of extra sweet flavour.

I could hardly wait to eat them when they finally came out of the oven and the marinade had thickened like a reduction. I kept it simple and ate them with some quickly prepared Uncle Ben's rice.

I realised that perhaps I had cooked a few too many ribs for one person and thought that maybe I could chew on the remaining amount cold the next day. I was wrong. They are much better eaten piping hot!