Pork Ribs and Stir Fry

This really isn't so much a post for a stir-fry as it is for the marinade I used for the meat. The planning for this meal was a little weird, as I just went to the store and grabbed whatever I thought would be good in a stir fry. I came up with: Napa cabbage, bean sprouts, water chestnuts, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, green beans, snow peas, carrots and Udon noodles.

I couldn't decide what kind of meat I wanted to use, so I just browsed around trying to find something that wasn't astronomically expensive. I spied some pork boneless country style ribs and figured surely I could do something with them.

So I got home and thought that maybe I should marinate the meat for awhile with some Asian flavors, just to be fancy...or something. I made a simple mix of:

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger

I wasn't able to marinate the meat as long as I wanted, and it still was amazing, so I can't imagine how good it would be if left soaking for a couple hours.
I was able to get exactly 1/4 cup of juice out of one orange, but if you don't want to completely annihilate the orange, you should use 2.

I made the ribs by heating up just the tiniest little amount of sesame oil in a skillet over medium high heat. I seared the pork on one side, then turned the heat down to medium, and seared the other side a little slower. Cook the pork all the way through, but barely. This will guarantee the pork stays juicy and tender. The brown sugar in the marinade made for a delicious caramelized coating on the ribs.

Stir-fries are pretty easy and customizable. Heat up your wok or large skillet over fairly high heat and get a mix of vegetable or olive and sesame oil very hot. Then add your vegetables in order by how long they take to cook. I added my green beans first and let them start to blister before I added the rest of the veggies.
For the noodles, I just boiled and drained them beforehand. When the veggies were done cooking, I removed them from the wok, then added the noodles to the wok for a few seconds, then returned the veggies to the wok. I also used some of the leftover marinade when I was cooking the veggies to add some nice flavor, as well as a little stir-fry sauce.

This was one of the yummiest Asian foods I've made in a while, and it's definitely staying on my 'eat more often' list!