Thai Style Sticky Rice, BBQ Pork Ribs, and Cucumber Salad

Ribs, rice and salad, plated together

The special Thai sticky rice cooker, a funnel shaped basket with a necked pot.

   This is always a highly requested dish, when my kids come home for their school break!  The combination of these flavors and textures is amazing.  

    The pork with its rich, salty barbecue taste and the rice with its sweet taste and super chewy texture, balanced off with the crisp crunch and vinegary dressing of the cucumber salad, makes a meal with perfect harmony!

  I purchased this rice cooker at a Thai market, many years ago.  With the internet these days, you can buy almost anything online.  So if you do not have a Thai market in your neck of the woods, search for one on the internet. 

As Always, 

ENJOY!

6-8 pieces, boneless country style pork ribs

Thai fish sauce

Thai Golden Mountain Soy Sauce

3-4 cups sweet rice

water for soaking

1 cucumber, diced

1 carrot shredded

cilantro

rice vinegar with salt and sugar, or sushi rice seasoning (vinegar with salt and sugar already added)

    Add pork ribs to ziplock bag, Drizzle in fish sauce and soy sauce to cover meat.  Seal bag and marinate several hours or over night.  Preheat grill and cook ribs until tender but cooked through. 

    For rice, place in large bowl and cover by an inch with water.  Let soak for 4-5 hours.

Fill pot with water, just below basket level.  Bring to a boil, covered  with lid.  Once boiling, remove lid, and add basket to pot, as shown in photo.   Drain rice of its soaking water.  Add wet rice to pot, and cover with lid.  Cook 15 min, and then flip rice mass, so top is at bottom and bottom is at top. Gently with wooden spoon break open the top of rice.  Cover with lid and repeat two more times, so rice cooks a total of 45 minutes.  

While rice is cooking prepare the salad.  Add peeled, diced cucumber with shredded carrot and chopped cilantro to a bowl.  Sprinkle with sushi seasoning rice vinegar until vegetables are lightly coated.  If using regular rice vinegar, add a sprinkling of salt and sugar to the vinegar, stir to dissolve and then add to cover vegetables.

   Serve meat and rice hot, along side the cool crisp and crunchy cucumber salad!