Korean Style Beef Short Ribs

We have been trying a lot of new recipes which means I have some catching up to do in sharing the really great ones. Saturday we adapted this recipe from Michelle Tam and it was incredible! The sauce infuses the meat with fantastic flavor. It's pretty quick and easy to get into the slow cooker. Once it's in, all you have to do is wait!

Korean Style Beef Short Ribs

Ingredients:
6 pounds of bone- in beef short ribs

Salt
Pepper

2 Tablespoons of your favorite oil, we used coconut oil
1 medium pear or Asian pear, peeled, cored, and chopped coarsely (we used a medium-large Bartlett pear that was ripe and juicy.)
1/3 cup soy sauce
6 garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half
3 scallions, roughly chopped
1 hunk of ginger, a little bigger than the size of your thumb, cut into small pieces
2 teaspoons of fish sauce (we used Red Boat fish sauce as recommended by Michelle)
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 cup chicken broth
Small handful of roughly chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:
First, season the ribs on both sides with salt and pepper. Put 2 Tablespoons of oil in a heavy bottomed pot and turn the heat to medium-high. Then in small batches, sear the ribs on both sides:

As you finish each batch of ribs, place them in the crock pot. You'll see the crock pot insert on the left in this photo, starting to get filled up with ribs:

Once the ribs are seared, get out your blender and puree up the pear, soy sauce, garlic, scallions, ginger, vinegar and fish sauce. Keep going until it's smooth. It turns out green because of the scallions:

Pour the sauce over the ribs in the crockpot. Deglaze the big pot with a cup of chicken broth to get all the delicious bits up. Pour the tasty chicken broth into the crock pot.

Turn the crockpot on to low and let cook until it's ready. The original recipe says 9-11 hours. Our crockpot runs a little hot, even on the low setting, so ours were ready after about 6-6.5 hours.

When the ribs are cooked, take them out of the sauce and let the sauce settle for about 5 minutes, so you can skim some of the fat off. Our ribs were well trimmed and still released about half an inch of fat while cooking.

Chop the cilantro and scatter over the ribs. Spoon some of the sauce over the ribs and serve.

Notes:

• This should serve 4-6 adults; it made enough for the three of us (T had his with hoisin sauce) and some leftovers. 
• The butcher was Fresh Market was really great and cut and trimmed the ribs for me. I also found the recommended fish sauce there. 
• Also did I mention it made the house smell great?