Asian Style Boneless Beef Short Ribs - Pressure Cooker Style (or slow cooker)

These last few weeks, my pressure cooker has been quite the workhorse. I want to cook dinner, most every night, for my family. But, I want speed and simplicity, and I don't want to skimp on flavor.  That's not asking much, is it?

I did a little stocking up in the meat department at my local Whole Foods. These are grass-fed short ribs.  I love slow-braising them, and serving them over polenta. Delish! The only problem is, you need 2 hours-- or more-- to yield tender and flavor ribs.  This doesn't work, when you get home at 5pm.

I bookmarked a recipe for Asian-Style short ribs from Cook's Illustrated's "Pressure Cooker Perfection", and this seemed like a good time to make the recipe. It sure seemed simple enough.
The braising liquid/sauce has hoison sauce (yep, I keep a jar in my pantry), garlic, fresh ginger, soy sauce, dry sherry, scallions and cayenne pepper.  I took less than 15 minutes to make the braising sauce.

NOTE: For those of you who don't own a pressure cooker, or still can't overcome an unnecessary fear of them, you can adapt this recipe for your oven or a slow cooker.  The only difference is that the pressure cooking time is 35 minutes. In the oven, factor in two hours, or with a slow cooker, factor in 4-6 hours.


I have an electric pressure cooker, with a non-stick insert.  Using the browning cycle (which is the same as heating a stove top pressure cooker on medium-high heat), fresh minced garlic and ginger is cooked for about a minute. Then the hoison sauce and the rest of the ingredients are added (a printable recipe card is at the very end of the post).

 

NOTE: Don't make my mistake, please. I bought bone-in short ribs, instead of boneless (I'll explain that at the end of the post, under my TASTING NOTES.

The short ribs are placed on top of the sauce, the pressure cooker lid is clicked on and locked in place and brought to high pressure. Its cooked at medium-low for 35 minutes.  As you can see, the ribs have broken down and there is fat on the surface, and the meat is breaking away from the bone.

I removed the short ribs, and covered them with foil to rest a bit. The sauce was strained into a fat separator to settle a bit.  

I ended up washing out the pressure cooker insert, and made sticky rice in 6 minutes!  I'm telling you, a pressure cooker can be your "bestest" kitchen helper.  

From start to finish, I had this dinner ready in under an hour.  Once again, please forgive my less than stellar food styling.  Food blogging, at night, after a long day at the office-- well, hopefully this photo looks enticing enough that you'll want to try this.

TASTING NOTES:  The short ribs: they were a bit on the tough side, and I blame it on buying the wrong cut of short ribs.  I had to spend a bit more time separating the meat from the bone, so I will definitely make sure to buy boneless short ribs, next time. Or, I might substitute buying chuck eye roast, cut into large chunks. I've used chuck eye roast, often, for braising which is also a very tender cut of meat for just this kind of cooking technique.  However, the sauce was so flavorful that I overlooked the slightly tough texture of these ribs.  I would actually double the sauce, to be honest!  The balance of the ginger and garlic ratio was perfect.  The cayenne pepper wasn't overpowering at all. 

You will find a printable recipe card at the end of the post.   More pressure cooking recipes to come!