Slow Cooker Asian-Style Short Ribs

One of the big gifts we received for our wedding was a slow cooker - a cooking tool I am not familiar with in the least!  From what I have heard, however, it can become an indispensable tool.  Luckily, when we were checking out in one of our many trips to Williams-Sonoma, we spotted this slow cooker cookbook at the checkout and thought it would be a helpful tool - not that we really needed another cookbook in our small apartment.

When looking at the recipes there were loads of delicious sounding ones, but when we stumbled across the Asian-Style Short Ribs, it seemed too good not to try.  One thing we quickly learned - short ribs are pricey!  The 6lbs required for the 6 servings (lunches that week) was about $45!  That is a lot of money for us to spend on a single ingredient, but we figured we could give it a shot just this once.

Short Ribs

To begin, Nick rubbed salt, pepper, and 5-spice powder into the ribs and brown all sides of them in the broiler - about 10 minutes on each side.  Meanwhile, he stirred together hoisin sauce, ketchup, vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, honey, onion, ginger and garlic in the bottom of the slow cooker.  

Stirring the sauce

Broiled Short Ribs

Nick then added the ribs to the slow cooker and coated them with the hoisin mixture, covered it up and let cook low and slow for about 6 hours.  This slow cooker has a handy timer so it's really easy to set up and walk away.

Cooking away!

Rather than the suggested slaw of onions, Nick whipped up a cucumber and sriracha salad to give the meal a bit more bite.

Sriracha Salad!

After the 6 hours were up, Nick stripped the meat off the bone and added it back to the slow cooker with the sauce (now braising liquid) to allow everything to come together one final time.

Slow cooked short rib off the bone...

Nick served this simply on a plate and with a side of cucumber salad.  The combination of the dish was yummy - the cool but spicy cucumber salad was a nice contrast to the richness of the short ribs.  The ribs were good, though I wish the Asian flavor was stronger and we probably could have added some more heat.  The leftovers for lunch actually had a deeper flavor - the meat got to sit in the juices for some time.  Bottom line, this was good, but the $45 worth of short rib was a bit steep.

Do you have a go-to slow cooker recipe?