Crispy Mint Ribs (薄荷排骨)
A traditional drinking food from Yunnan that employs some uncommon technique.
Deep frying herbs is a technique that I associate quite a bit with Thai cooking.
Tossing a bit of Makrut lime leaves in with fried chicken or pork rinds is probably the most iconic move… but there’re dry nam phrik dips with deep fried lemongrass in the mix, and crispy deep fried basil is a classic addition to certain omelets or fried fish dishes:
It’s a move that makes a ton of sense if you’re running at, shall we say, an ‘herb surplus’. Like, living in Bangkok, figuring out what in gods name to do with massive bundles of excess Makrut leaves is a… constant struggle for me. The smallest quantity I can pick up at the market is, like, twenty – a variable when most recipes call for two or three. Because while certain vegetables seem to struggle in the Central Thai climate, my god, do herbs thrive: pretty much all our neighbors have a some sort of herb garden outside their house. In our alley’s parking lot, Holy Basil grows in the cracks in the cement.
Now, if you’re looking optimize – if you’re looking to squeeze out every last drop of flavor from any given herb – deep frying probably isn’t the ideal route. After a bath in hot oil, lime leaf will be less lime-y; basil, less basil-y. But against the backdrop of herbaceous plenty… why wouldn’t you want a bit of crispy lime in with your fried chicken, if the cost of doing so is practically zero?
Herb Frying in Yunnan
Chinese cuisines tend to go pretty light on herbs. Scallion and cilantro are ubiquitous, of course, and Chinese chives and green garlic bring up the rear… but after that? You really start having to delve into extremely local dishes and ingredients.
That is, with the notable exception of the Yunnan province. In addition to the usual suspects, you can also find sawtooth coriander (大芫荽), laksa leaf (香柳), fish mint (鱼腥草), Thai basil (金盖), and Mint. And of these herbs? The one with the most reach – the one that cuts through pretty much all of Yunnan – has to be mint.
You might expect to find an herb-deep-frying dish to hail from the southern corner of the province – that is, Xishuangbanna: the area a stone’s throw away from Thailand, the area with the most Tai speakers, the area with the most crossover with Thai cuisine.
But… it’s not. This is a Han Yunnan dish from the central plain. It labels the technique shengzha (生炸), ‘raw deep fried’, which is most classically associated with a dish called shenzha chicken. However, these days, if you were perusing the streets of Kunming, it’d probably be a good bit more likely that you’d bump into these mint ribs.
Why did this technique seem to randomly pop up in Han Chinese Yunnan, seemingly skipping over the more Tai-influences south and west? Your guess is as good as ours! Perhaps they were running at a surplus of mint.
In light of that, while below we will of course be whipping up some “Mint Fried Ribs”, I do think this is the type of recipe that you can use as a base for what makes sense for you. Summer’s coming up, and – given what we know about our audience – there’s likely a non-zero probability that you might be the sort that maintains an herb garden. So our advice? Use your surplus. If mint’s the cheapest option for you, use mint; if you’re swimming in sweet basil, use sweet basil. It will be different, but perhaps truer to the essence of the dish.
Ingredients
See the note below for instructions on how to make this dish ‘western supermarket club’.
For the Ginger-Scallion water:
Ginger (姜), 2 inches
Scallions (葱), 2
Hot, boiled water from the kettle. For reference, I added a little more than was needed for the recipe, ~ ¾ cup. You can toss any excess, or save for another use.
Mint leaves (薄荷叶), from about 15 sprigs. Picked.
Garlic (大蒜), 2 cloves. Cut into slices.
Dried chilis (干辣椒), 3-4. Cut into ~2 inch sections.
Pork ribs (猪排骨), 500g. Chopped into ~1” by 1.5” pieces.
Marinade for the ribs:
Salt, 3/4 tsp
Sugar, 1/2 tsp
Red fragrant chili powder, 1 tsp. E.g. qinjiao (秦椒), gochugaru, or kashmiri chili powder.
White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1/4 tsp
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉) -or- MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp
Ginger-scallion water from above, ~6.5 tbsp (or as needed)
Baijiu liquor (白酒) -or- Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1/2 tsp
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp
Oyster sauce (蚝油), 1/2 tbsp
Cornstarch (生粉), 3 tbsp
Oil for deep frying
Process:
Prep:
First, make the Ginger-Scallion water: smash two inches of ginger, slice two scallions into ~2 inch sections and smash those as well. Transfer to a bowl, and fill with hot, boiled water from the kettle. We will likely use about a third of a cup for the recipe, but prefer adding a little extra just in case. Cover, and let it naturally come down to room temperature, ~40 minutes. After that time, strain, also wringing out the ginger/scallion to get every last drop.
Pick the leaves off of about fifteen sprigs of mint. Wash and drain well. You do not want it to be too wet before deep frying.
Thinly slice two cloves of garlic. Cut 3-4 dried chilis into ~2 inch sections, discarding the stems.
Cut 500g of pork ribs into roughly 1” by 1.5” pieces. Transfer to a bowl.
To marinate the ribs:
Mix of ribs with ¾ tsp salt, ½ tsp sugar, 1 teaspoon of your red fragrant chili powder, ¼ teaspoon white pepper, and ¼ tsp chicken bouillon powder (or MSG). Mix well. Add in the ginger/scallion water tablespoon by tablespoon, mixing constantly, to let the water absorb into the ribs. Stop right past the point when the ribs are completely saturated - for reference, this quantity was 6.5 tbsp for our ribs.
Continue to mix in ½ tsp of Baijiu (or Shaoxing wine, or your liquor of choice), 1 tsp of soy sauce, and ½ tbsp of oyster sauce. Mix well, then coat/mix with 3 tbsp of cornstarch.
To fry:
Get a wok of oil up to 150C. Fry the mint for ~30 seconds to crisp up. Remove, drain well, and toss on a serving plate. Reserve a small handful of it for later.
Get the oil back up to 150C. Swap the flame to medium/medium-high, and add in the ribs. This will lower the temperature, which is what we want because we’ll be aiming to fry this at around 120. Once the coating’s set, give the ribs a stir, and fry for ~6 minutes. You want the ribs to be cooked and the meat to begin to be retreating from the bone. Remove and set aside.
Get the oil back up to 150C. Add in the sliced garlic and the chilis. After a quick mix, add back in the pork ribs. Fry until the garlic is just beginning to brown, then remove it all. Set aside in a strainer or a spider to drain off a bit of the excess oil.
Add the extra reserved fried mint from before. Give everything a toss and mix together. Serve on the bed of fried mint.
How to Western Supermarket-ify
This recipe is very close to being western supermarket-able. You could easily simply cut the ingredients you cannot find, and still get pretty good results.
If you are in the market for substitutes, these would be our recommendations:
You can cut the oyster sauce, optionally compensating by upping the sugar to ¾ tsp and the soy sauce to ½ tbsp.
The wine can similarly be cut, but you could optionally swap in a cheap brandy (my substitute of choice), a dry sherry (everyone else’s substitute of choice), or just your favorite liquor. Have some bourbon lying around? Why not.
I feel like I have seen gochugaru in western supermarkets, but if unavailable, you could swap that 1 tsp for ¾ tsp of paprika and ¼ tsp of cayenne pepper.
For the dried chilis, use what’s available - preferably something low-to-medium-spicy so that it is still enjoyable to munch on. If I was in the United States, I would likely opt for Guajillo.
How to Eat
This is a slow eating dish, excellent as a drinking food or drinking snack. Everything in the dish is crispy and edible. While the mint is not longer really… ‘minty’, it still’s got a nice subtle fragrant to it, and is nice and crispy. If you’re using a delicious dried chili, the chilis themselves are also great - we just got in a batch of Sichuan erjingtiao, and they’re practically ‘fruity’ after frying. And, of course, the crispy fried garlic might be one of my favorite bits.
Nibbling around the dish alongside some baijiu (and good company) is simply… fantastic.
If you don’t drink, maybe try pairing it alongside some miscellaneous junk food, a few liters of sodas, a table of good friends, and rolling some dice in your TTRPG of choice.
An Old Recipe for Shengzha Chicken
Some people over on the YouTube were asking about a recipe for the chicken version. Figured I could quickly copy it over here. From the cookbook《云南菜谱》(published 1982, from 昆明饮食公司):
Here is a quick, slapdash translation:
Ingredients:
Tender chicken, 350g
Cilantro, 50g
Seasoning:
Scallion 15g
Ginger 15g
Egg white from 1 egg
Sugar 2g
Five spice 0.5g
Slurry: Broad bean starch, 5g mixed with 5g water
The liquid from Laozao fermented rice wine, 25g
Salt 5g
Lard for deep frying
Process:
Cut the chicken into 3cm chunks, rinse and drain well. Onto the chicken, add in the salt, five spice, sugar, ginger, scallion, and laozao juice, massage well and marinate for two hours.
After that time, pick out the ginger and scallion, transfer the chicken pieces into a dry bowl (discarding any liquid). Whisk the egg white till foamy, mix with the slurry in a small bowl, then add that to the chicken and mix well.
Snap off the older part of the stems of the cilantro, wash and drain well.
In a wok, heat up the lard (1.5kg) to 120C, fry the cilantro till crispy. Take it out, drain, and put it on the serving plate.
Heat oil again to 120C, fry the chicken for 1 minute, take it out. Then heat the oil up to 180C, toss the chicken back in and fry till it reaches a reddish brown color.
Take it out and drain, place it over the crispy cilantro.
Characteristics:
The color contrast between the deep red chicken and green cilantro can be an eye catching piece on a banquet. The chicken is crispy yet tender, the combination of flavor and texture makes great match with alcoholic beverages.