Stovetop 3-Ingredient Asian Ribs

Name: Stovetop 3-Ingredient Asian Ribs
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 25 min
Cuisine: Asian
Ingredients: 1 pound flanken (cross-cut) ribs (about 4 pieces); 2 tablespoons oyster sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee); 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee); Chopped green onions or white sesame seeds for garnishing (optional)

posted by Sharon Chen on Oct 13, 2017 (updated Aug 21, 2020) 12 comments »

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Quick and easy Asian ribs with only 3 ingredients pan grilled on the stove top. This is a great meat option for a busy workday dinner.

Quick and easy Asian ribs with only 3 ingredients pan grilled on the stove top. This is a great meat option for a busy workday dinner.

Whoa?! Only three ingredients for a short rib recipe including the short ribs? That’s right! It’s a thing.

I originally came across this recipe from a trip back to Shanghai, China visiting my mom. She made these ribs one night for dinner. The second time I came across these ribs was in my friend’s house in San Francisco. He is Cantonese and his mom made some ribs for us that tasted exactly like my mom’s. It turns out that both the Shanghainese mom and the Cantonese mom use exactly the same marinade.

It must be good!

Before we talk about the marinade, let’s choose your ribs first.

As easy as it sounds, with the right ingredients and approximately 20 minutes of your time, you should be able to quickly whip up an Asian meal on a busy workday night. If you marinate the ribs the day before, cooking only takes about 5 minutes.

Table of Contents hide

What Kind of Short Ribs Should You Use for This Recipe?
The 2-Ingredient BBQ Marinade for The Asian Ribs
Pan Grill The Asian Ribs on The Stove Top
Stovetop 3-Ingredient Asian Ribs
About the Author
- Sharon Chen

What Kind of Short Ribs Should You Use for This Recipe?

There are two popular ways to cut short ribs – English style and flanken style. In western cuisine, we tend to use the most popular English-cut short ribs. The famous Korean short ribs, however, are flanken style of short ribs. It’s a thin cut, which is about 1/2-inch thick, goes across the bones so that each slice contains a few pieces of bone.

The flanken style of short ribs is what you’ll be using in this recipe.

Quick and easy Asian ribs with only 3 ingredients pan grilled on the stove top. This is a great meat option for a busy workday dinner.

The 2-Ingredient BBQ Marinade for The Asian Ribs

Are you familiar with oyster sauce and hoisin sauce? Both sauces are thick and dark in color. They are commonly used in Chinese cuisine for flavoring meat, stir-fries, or they can be used as dipping sauces as well.

Oyster sauce is made from oyster extracts, sugar, salt and water thickened with cornstarch. It’s commonly used in stir-fries like our Bacon and Egg Fried Rice or as a dressing like the Garlic Dressing Spinach. This is a very savory sauce with a hint of sweetness.

Hoisin sauce usually is made with soybeans, red chilies, and garlic. And it tastes sweet and a little bit salty. It’s also very commonly used in Chinese cuisine. This Asian Noodles in Hoisin Sauce recipe is a great example. In addition, if you’ve been to a Vietnamese restaurant, the dark brown sauce they set on each table is hoisin sauce.

Now that you know what oyster sauce and hoisin sauce are made of and how they taste like, imaging we mix the two sauces together. That’s the 2-ingredient marinade for your ribs. With both sauces complicity flavors combined, there’s no need to add any other seasonings, which makes this recipe super simple and quick to make.

If you are in a hurry, marinate the ribs for only 15 minutes and you can start cooking. But if you marinate the ribs a bit longer or overnight in the fridge, it will make your ribs even more flavorful. The next day, you literally only need about 5 minutes to bring them to the table. Let’s see how to pan grill the Asian ribs you prepared on the stove top.

Quick and easy Asian ribs with only 3 ingredients pan grilled on the stove top. This is a great meat option for a busy workday dinner.

Pan Grill The Asian Ribs on The Stove Top

Remember, unlike English cut short ribs, the flanken style short ribs need to be cooked hot and fast. They are easily overcooked, so you definitely want to keep an eye on them.

For this recipe, you can use either a grill pan or a griddle. Lightly grease the surface and heat it up over high heat on the stove. I have a griddle and an electronic stove top. The ribs turned out just fine. But if you have a gas stove, oh, lucky you!

Once your pan is hot (after about 2 minutes), use tongs to place marinated beef ribs in the pan and cook each side for about 1 minute, untouched until and the internal temperature of the ribs reaches to 170°F.

From this point on, turn off the heat and remove the ribs from the pan. Use a scissor to cut up the ribs. As for garnishing, either chopped green onions or toasted white sesame seeds will add additional flavor to your delicious ribs. I enjoyed the ribs over rice and the garlic dressing spinach mentioned earlier in this post. Hope you enjoy this recipe!