Behind the Recipe: Gochujang-Glazed Ribs

Pit master Quy Hoang leads me through the bustling kitchen to a tall, cabinet-style smoker, its diamond plate steel doors stained black on the fringes from smoke.

He reaches in and pulls out a rack of ribs, the meat obviously tender when Hoang slides a hand underneath the center of the bone side and the rack bends into a gentle C-shape. After hours of cooking, the gochugaru rub has formed an impressive bark, which Hoang will later lacquer with a gochujang glaze until the rack glistens deep maroon.

These ribs, along with other house specialties such as smoked char siu pork belly bao buns and porkstrami egg rolls, exemplify the combination of masterful technique and bold flavors that make Blood Bros. stand out in a city filled with boundary-pushing barbecue.

It’s a model that Hoang and his high-school buddies–turned business partners, Robin and Terry Wong, carved out carefully: First, they spent a year mastering Texas barbecue fundamentals through pop-ups and figuring out what defines their style of cooking. 

“Meat, barbecue, family, brotherhood,” Robin says, telling me how the restaurant got its name.

Only then did the trio take their first creative leap: gochujang beef belly burnt ends. It’s the dish that inspired the gochujang-glazed ribs that I had come to taste today, and it hinted at the innovative fusion style that would eventually make Blood Bros. a local legend.  

“Our menu is influenced by the flavors we grew up with,” Hoang tells me. “Houston is such a diverse city. We had friends from all backgrounds—Jamaican, Chinese, Vietnamese. You’d hang out at their house and end up eating all kinds of food."

A Serpentine Approach

Barbecuing ribs is all about low-heat cooking, which breaks down the meat’s abundant, tough collagen while infusing it with smoke.

Commercial smokers are primed for this: Their fireboxes are set away from the smoking chamber so that the meat cooks indirectly and stays moist while slowly tenderizing and soaking up smoke flavor over several hours.

But re-creating these conditions on a much-smaller standard charcoal grill, as I intended to do for a homespun take on the Blood Bros. classic, is tricky because the ribs sit closer to the fire and can easily dry out and char.

Plus, opening the lid to refuel allows heat to escape, disrupting the requisite steady low temperature.

Enter the “charcoal snake”: a C-shaped, double-layer arrangement of briquettes with wood chunks staggered on top. It’s a game changer for backyard barbecuing because it allows a charcoal kettle to mimic the long, slow burn of a smoker. Lit at one end, it provides hours of low, slow, smoky heat (roughly 300 degrees) without the need to refuel.

After seasoning the racks with a gochugaru and sesame-seed rub laced with salt, sugar, and granulated garlic, I placed them on the grill bone side down, set over a water pan and perpendicular to the arch of the snake.

This orientation shielded the ribs’ meaty sides from any direct heat, so they didn’t cook too quickly or char, while the water pan kept the temperature of the grill stable and added humidity that prevented the ribs from drying out. The cooking, which took about 4 hours, was practically hands-off from start to finish. I

I did find it’s best to rotate the ribs once to ensure even cooking, but it’s a simple step and the kettle quickly bounced back to its target temperature.

Glazed Over

The viscosity, sugar, and flavor intensity of gochujang make it a great glaze base.

I mimicked the Blood Bros. original mixture by adding equal parts soy sauce and brown sugar to the chile paste, plus a little ginger ale (for warm spice and acid) and sesame oil for nuttiness.

When the ribs came off the grill, I simply brushed them with a few tablespoons of the glaze, which clung beautifully and amplified the pork’s smokiness. With a shower of toasted sesame seeds and sliced scallions, I had a couple slabs of Houston right in my own backyard.