Roast Lamb Ribs 烤羊排
Roast Lamb Ribs is featured among the local specialties of Inner Mongolia.
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Roast Lamb Ribs (烤羊排) belong to the barbecue of Wuhai (乌海), the Inner Mongolian city on the Yellow River with the Ordos grassland (鄂尔多斯草原) at its back. Inner Mongolia News Network (内蒙古新闻网) sums up the local attitude as "Wuhai grills everything", its Wuhai rib recipe uses Arbas (阿尔巴斯) ribs, and the city's tourism bureau pairs roast ribs with Wuhai wine.
Ingredients
Wuhai's lamb dishes are built on the Arbas breed, which Inner Mongolia News Network describes as goats ranging free over the hills of Arbas township (阿尔巴斯乡) in Otog Banner (鄂托克旗). They are good climbers, feed on wild fruit, grass roots and medicinal herbs, and give firm meat with plenty of chew.
How it is made
The Wuhai recipe that Inner Mongolia News Network gives for Golden Sand Lamb Ribs (金沙羊排) starts with small Arbas ribs chopped into long strips and marinated for 20 hours with Chinese medicinal herbs and dijiao (地椒), a wild thyme of Inner Mongolia. The strips are roasted over a low fire for 20 minutes, brushed with sauce and cumin, and finished with a scattering of "golden sand".
Another Wuhai style goes by the name agate-stone roasting: the same outlet lists agate-stone roast meat (玛瑙石烤肉) among the city's barbecue styles, and agate-stone roast lamb ribs were among the dishes served in July 2022 at the city's second "Eight Flavours in Wuhai" (八方滋味在乌海) food awards, reported by Inner Mongolia Daily (内蒙古日报).
How it is eaten
The Wuhai culture and tourism bureau pairs roast lamb ribs and roast lamb trotters with Wuhai's desert-grown wine, and calls wine with lamb ribs, in autumn when the grapes ripen, the most fashionable way to "put on autumn fat" (贴秋膘). In the restaurants of Wuhai's wineries, lamb ribs appear among the city's fusion dishes served alongside the estate wines.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.