Rendang Pork Ribs from the Smoker

Rendang is the most famous Indonesian dish. Traditionally, rendang is made with beef or lamb, but we had a nice rack of pork ribs in the freezer. As far as we’re concerned, rendang is more of a cooking style with a few fixed ingredients you can experiment with.

You can throw all the ingredients for the rendang straight into a food processor, but we find that the flavours come out better if you roast everything first. The rendang becomes much richer in taste. After roasting, everything can go into a food processor to get a thick paste.

We remove the membrane on the back to let the marinade penetrate well on all sides. This membrane keeps the marinade and the smoke from flavouring the meat. Additionally, this membrane will dry out to a parchment-like layer, which just has a weird texture when eating.

It’s easy to do with a blunt butter knife. Insert the knife between a bone and the membrane, creating space for a finger underneath.

Then, press the knife downward while pulling the membrane off the ribs. This usually works in one go, but some small pieces of membrane may remain. You can remove these with a piece of kitchen paper.

We spread the rendang marinade over the spare ribs and let them marinate in the refrigerator for at least two days. We put the spare ribs in a ziplock bag to ensure good contact between the marinade and the meat.

We smoked these rendang spare ribs on our pellet grill with a mix of maple, hickory, and cherry. The smoke gave them a bacon-like flavour, and the cherry provided a beautiful colour.

When the ribs are smoking, you can prepare the rendang sauce comfortably in the kitchen. What you need is a large wok where everything fits comfortably. The secret, and perhaps not obvious, ingredient for rendang is cinnamon. Cinnamon is sweet and warm, giving the dish a unique scent that enhances flavour.

Originally, rendang uses kaffir lime leaves. The store didn’t have these in stock, but they suggested that you can also use the peel of a lime very well. Cut off the green part of the lime with a sharp knife without taking too much of the white part. That white part is very bitter.

When the spare ribs have smoked for almost 3 hours at 120ºC (248F), we continue cooking them in foil. We do this with a boat foil. We make a “boat” out of 2 layers of aluminium foil and then place the spare ribs in it with some butter underneath. We then put the spare ribs upside down in the butter. Because the foil doesn’t cover the spare ribs on top, the smoke can still reach the meat there.

We set the grill to 150ºC (302F) and let the ribs cook for another one to two hours. The butter will melt, and together with the marinade, it will provide a nice bath in which the meat will become wonderfully tender.

You’ll notice that the ribs are starting to protrude slightly. That’s the sign that the meat is getting tender. Also, when we lift the ribs, the meat begins to tear. You can also check the doneness by sticking a toothpick into the meat. If it goes in and out without much effort, they’re ready.

We still want something to chew on, so we don’t cook them until they’re fall-of-the-bone tender. The colour and shine are great in any case.

Meanwhile, the sauce was also ready to be served with the pork ribs. We served These rendang spare ribs with white rice and spring onions. If you’re going to make this recipe, let us know in the comments below. Or better yet, take a photo, post it on Instagram, and tag @bbqhelden so we can see what you’ve made.