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)