Pork Ribs Recipe with Tomatoes– Do My Kids Like It?

For the past couple of days, my kids have been asking me, “what are we eating today mom?”

“Chicken of course!” I said.

You can see the expressions on their faces. LOL

I guess they are tired of eating chicken every day.

Today, I am cooking pork spare ribs with tomatoes or Suon Sot Ca Chua. I don’t cook this dish often, so I hope it will be a hit for dinner.

The spare ribs with tomatoes is a delicious dish paired beautifully with steamed rice.

If you are on a carb diet, you can simply pair any salad dish with cucumbers. I have done that when I am on my carb diet. The Suon Sot Ca Chua sauce is wonderful for dressing.

Tips for Suon Sot Ca Chua:

Fresh tomatoes: If you want the best flavor of Suon Sot Ca Chua, use fresh tomatoes instead of tomato cans. I found the canned tomatoes give the sauce a mixed taste of spaghetti sauce. However, if you don’t have fresh tomatoes, you can use canned tomatoes and let me know if you like it.
Marinate: If you have time and for the best flavor, I suggest marinating the meat overnight. If you don’t have time, it is okay to cook it the way it is like I do today. It is a last minute decision on the menu; I just cook it without marinating the meat first.
Braising: the sauce of this dish should be concentrated and thick. Depending on how you like it, you can keep simmering it longer until the liquid thickness is to your liking. The beautiful part is that you always can add some more water later if it gets too thick.
Sugar and alternatives: I like when my mom cooks this dish. Her dish always tastes better than mine because she uses a lot of sugar and MSG. I haven’t used MSG in my cooking for more than a decade now. And recently, I reduced my sugar intake as well. For a dish like this, I don’t use sugar anymore. However, it is up to you, you can add ½ teaspoon or more to your taste. If you look for the alternatives to sugar, monk fruit sugar and coconut sugar are great.
Garnish: you may not find a lot of garnish used in my cooking. I want simple and less ingredients as much as possible. Garnish is optional in my recent cooking. If you like, Green onions, cilantros, and black pepper go well with this dish. The one I like the most is black pepper. A lot of them! I mean A LOT! Try it with hot steamed rice. Love it!
How to serve this dish: Suon Sot Ca Chua goes well with other side dishes like fresh cucumber, steamed broccolis, and pickles (fermented mustard green is my favorite). This dish is rich in flavor; therefore, you can use the sauce for vegetable dipping and drizzling it on the rice.

Ingredients

2 pounds pork spareribs, cut into chunks
1 medium onion
2 large tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, minced or sliced
2 TBS Fish sauce (I used Redboat)
Mushroom seasoning
Salt to taste
2 cups Water
1 or 2 TBS Avocado oil
Black pepper

Instructions:

Parboil the pork in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes. Drain and wash with cold water.
In a sauté pan, add avocado oil and heat it with medium heat. Add onion and fry it for another 5 minutes until it turns a little bit brown.
Add diced tomatoes in and cook for another 2 minutes
Then add the meat to the pan, take heat up to high.
Add salt, fish sauce and mushroom seasoning to taste.
Cook with high heat until it boils and low the heat to simmer. Cover with the lid.
Simmer for 40 minutes. Take the lid off and continue simmer until the water reduce and thicken to your liking.
Serve with rice and cucumber or any veggie side dish you have.

Tonight, I serve this dish with homemade fermented mustard green, homemade kimchi, and broccolis.