Black Bean Sauce

Dinner went into the slow cooker a little bit ago. I thought I'd share it with you.

I had picked up some frozen short ribs at the Asian grocery nearby the other day. I tossed them into the slow cooker along with some homemade black bean sauce.

When it comes out, I'll serve it alongside some rice. If I'm feeling it, I might quickly stir-fry some onions and parsnips as well.

The black bean sauce, though, is the kicker, and it is incredibly easy to make. The key ingredient here is fermented black beans- sometimes sold as dried or salted black beans. You can find these in Asian grocery stores for about $2 for a bag that will last you a good, long while. They look a bit like raisins (and have a similar consistency) so if you keep them in a jar (their shelf life is long), please label them.

Dried black beans aren't actually black turtle beans. They are, rather, a sort of fermented soy bean known as douchi.

To make the black bean sauce, I diverge from tradition. My usual go-to book for Chinese recipes - Potsticker Chronicles- describes a process of taking the dried beans and mashing them with a mortar and pestle and then rehydrating them with some boiling water and... well, it was a bit involved. It was also a technique for making a black bean sauce to cook in a stir-fry while ensuring that the flavor of the beans were prominent. I wasn't worried about that. I was using the slow cooker. Flavor would emerge.

Instead, I turned to my blender. I tossed in about a cup and a half of beef stock that I had in the refridgerator, a quarter cup or so of the beans, half an onion, some garlic and parsley, and about a half cup of wine. I blended that until I got a liquid. Then I tossed in a wee bit of rice vinegar, sesame oil, and some spices (sichuan peppercorns and some mustard seeds) and blended it a bit more. That got poured over the short ribs in the slow cooker. I added a couple pieces of broken cinnamon stick as an afterthought.

Easy. I'll let you know how it turned out later.

Later:
Verdict: Nummy. The sauce turned out a bit thinner than I like, but I wasn't really paying attention to consistency when I made it so that was totally my fault. I ought to have put a bit more in there to thicken it - probably some corn starch or some pureed carrots or something.