Red-Cooked Pork Belly
Red-Cooked Pork Belly
(serves 6)
1 lb/1000 g pork belly
thumb-sized knob/150 g ginger, sliced
2 tbsps peanut oil
1 tbsp sugar
a large/90g scallion, white part cut into 3‑inch pieces
3 dried red chili peppers
1 tsp red Sichuan peppercorns
2 tbsps Mirin (Chinese cooking wine)
3 tbsps dark soy sauce
1 star anise
1 1‑inch piece cinnamon stick or a pinch of ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup/250 ml water
“Red-cooked” simply means that the main ingredient of the cooking liquid will be soy sauce. So be ready with plenty, and extra to serve with the steamed rice you will want alongside. Bring a pot of water to boil. Immerse entire slab of pork belly with ginger. Remove any scum that surfaces. After five minutes, discard water and rinse meat and ginger with cold water. Slice pork belly into 1‑inch cubes.
Heat cooking oil and sugar in a clay pot over low flame and let the sugar begin to melt. Toss in the pork pieces and ginger with scallion, chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns and brown over high flame. Add Mirin and dark soy sauce while continuing to stir fry. Add salt, star anise, cinnamon and water. Bring to a gentle boil then simmer over lowest flame, covered for at least 2 hours. Stir occasionally. Serve with rice and a crunchy salad.
(this recipe was adapted from this original)