Instructions
- Place ribs and water in a cooking pot and bring to a boil.
- Add bay leaf, ½ tsp pepper, 1 tsp salt, and onion, then, lower the heat.
- Cover and simmer for 45 minutes.
- Remove the ribs from stock and drain well. Reserve ½ cup of the stock.
- In a small bowl, mix Smucker's sweet orange marmalade, reserved pork stock, Worcestershire sauce, ¼ tsp pepper, and 1 tsp salt.
- In a large frying pan, add olive oil.
- Fry the ribs until they are lightly brown on both sides.
- Add sweet orange marmalade mixture to the ribs, then, cover and simmer for 4 minutes, in low heat. Turn the ribs over on its other side and simmer again for 4 minutes in low heat. The sauce will be thickened by this time.
Sweet Orange Marmalade Spareribs is a two-stage recipe that gets the ribs tender before the flavor really comes together, boiling them first with onion, bay leaf, and a light seasoning of pepper and salt until the meat is soft enough to fall off the bone. That gentle simmer does the heavy lifting on texture, so by the time the ribs hit the pan they’re already tender, leaving the second stage free to focus purely on flavor and color.
The glaze is what makes this dish, orange marmalade thinned out with a bit of the reserved cooking stock and sharpened with Worcestershire sauce, so it’s sweet but not cloying, with a savory undertone running underneath the citrus. Browning the ribs first in oil gives them a bit of caramelized color before the marmalade sauce goes in, and simmering them in that sauce on low heat lets it reduce and thicken into a glossy glaze that clings to the ribs rather than pooling in the pan. Flipping halfway through keeps that glaze even on both sides. What comes out is tender, fall-apart ribs coated in a bright, citrusy glaze that leans sweet upfront with a savory finish from the Worcestershire, an easy way to dress up simple boiled ribs into something that looks and tastes far more polished.
