My Chau's Baby Back Ribs

One of the great parts about living close to my parents is that my mom always wants to send me home with tons of food, whether leftovers or ingredients for future dishes. As a Costco shopper, she usually has tons of things in bulk that she's more than happy to share with me. This past weekend, in addition to random necessities like crushed red pepper and garlic, she gave me a rack of ribs in a marinade, ready for cooking. How could I turn it down?

As ribs go, these aren't your traditional American BBQ ribs; rather, the use of fish sauce (nuoc mam) makes this a Vietnamese recipe and it is mmm mmm good!

The marinade is prepared as follows (recipe courtesy of My Chau):

• dissolve 1/2 cup sugar in 1 cup warm water
• add 1/3 cup fish sauce (nuoc mam - Squid brand preferred) and 2 tbsp of chopped lemongrass
• adjust marinade sauce to your taste (add sugar, water or nuoc mam as needed)
• add ribs to marinade and leave overnight
• in the morning, flip the rib over to marinate the other sid
• before cooking, take ribs out of fridge to allow them to reach room temperature
• cook the ribs for one hour at 350 degrees in the oven (flip the rib rack over halfway through cooking)
• after an hour, turn the broiler on and broil about 10 minutes or until the ribs have a nice warm brown color

Once the ribs have cooled, slice them up and enjoy with your favorite sides!* The ribs were perfectly cooked: the edges were crisp, but the meat came easily off the bone. This was a perfect Sunday night dinner and I'll be sure to make it again! Thanks, mom!

*my favorite sides would usually consist of white rice or some other carb, but we had some veggies on hand and I decided to be good and eat those instead!