Here’s a home-cooked bak kut teh for those of you who love soup-based dishes. The Songfa brand bak kut teh mix packs a punch – you can drink many bowls of it and not get greasy or sick of it. This take on bak kut teh fuses both Chinese and Japanese flavours. It uses wheat soba noodles for dipping into the bak kut teh, much like how the Japanese uses the same noodles to dip into the sauce before sluriping the noodles up. It’s a brand new experience, but flavours are kept traditional and authentic.
For pork ribs lovers out there, I believe you will like it irrespective of the types of noodles used. Make sure to get the classic thick dark soy sauce to dip your ribs into to make the effort of cooking this dish at home worth the while!
Ingredients:
- Prime pork ribs: 500g (about 6 pieces)
- Water: 1 litre
- Bak kut teh mix: Songfa or other brands, 1 packet
- White pepper (whole): 1 tbsp
- Garlic: 1 head, lightly crushed
- Fish sauce: 3 tbsp
- Bak choy: 100g, roughly chopped
- Wheat soba: 2 packs
- Dark soy sauce: to serve ribs with
Method:
- Blanch pork ribs in boiling water. Remove ribs and discard water.
- Combine water, bak kut teh mix, white pepper, garlic, fish sauce and pork ribs in a pressure cooker. Cook on soup mode (about 20min).
- Remove scum. Scoop up pork ribs and place in 2 serving bowls.
- Continue boiling the stock. Cook bak choy and soba.
- Scoop into serving bowls. Dish the soup into a separate bowl.
- Dip soba into soup to eat. Separately dip pork ribs into dark soy sauce to eat.
Disclaimers:
- This recipe kindly adapts from the ‘Maggie Mee’ recipes which came from The Sunday Times dated April 2007.
- Cooking the pork ribs in the pressure cooker will allow them to become more tender (meat off the bones!).
- The recipe recommended for the soba to be placed inside ice cold water before serving. I didn’t do that because I cooked the soba directly in the stock itself and so didn’t want to wash the stock away from the noodles which would have been such a pity!
Serving:
2 persons