Saturday, August 2, 2014 – So the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up again, and of course, I want to do another dinner party. But what do I make?
On a completely unrelated note, about a month ago, my friend Abhi asks me if I’ve done any “soy-boiled pork”. To which I respond, “I haven’t done it recently, but know that I’ve taken cooking classes, I can make it better before.”
Hmm… I wonder where I’m going with this…
Soy-braised pork (lu3 rou4) is one of the most popular dishes in Taiwanese cuisine. It’s made from braising pork shoulder in a soy sauce mixture (watered down 5 to 1), and in my case, black vinegar. Instead of searching on teh intarwebs for a recipe, I decided to synthesize a recipe from first principles, from childhood memories, and from the Sizzleworks class notes. This is the first time I’ve made my own recipe. (Other than, you know, cookies and pudding.) So I figure, this should also be the first time I share a recipe on my blog.
Without further ado…
Ingredients
vegetable oil
1 lb pork shoulder, cut into 1.5 inch cubes
vegetable oil
1/2 onion, coarsely chopped
1-inch piece of ginger, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
pinch kosher salt
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup black vinegar
1 2/3 cup water
50g rock sugar
1 star anise
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 325 F.
2. In a frying pan, brown pork in vegetable oil on high heat. Remove from pan.
3. Add onions, ginger, and garlic to frying pan. Sprinkle on salt. Saute on medium heat until fragrant (about 3 min).
4. Add soy sauce, black vinegar, water, rock sugar, and star anise to onions, bring to boil, remove from heat.
5. Add pork, cover in parchment paper, foil, lid, braise in oven, stirring occasionally, until the pork is tender and tears easily with a fork, about 1.5 hours.
6. Let cool for 15-30 minutes, loosely covered, before serving.
Serves 2.
If doubling or tripling the recipe, increase braising time to ???.
You might notice a few discrepancies between my “cast photo” and the recipe above. For starters, the cast photo has Madeira, a bag of Chinese 5-Spice powder, and a white pepper grinder. I was originally going add the Madeira, the 5-Spice, and the white pepper at the end of braising. But the sauce was so delicious, I decided not to.
You might also notice that unusual jar of garlic.
I’m always looking for alternatives to reduce the amount of choping I need to do. Last time, I decided to try garlic paste. This time, I decided to try freeze-dried minced garlic. Mainly since because it’s freeze-dried, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and probably lasts as long as your average spice in your pantry. I added a tablespoon of this stuff to the braise. The flavor of the sauce was so rich, I dunno if the garlic helped. For the real thing, I might as well just use real garlic anyway.
One last note, I originally planned to braise the pork for 3 hours. After 1.5 hours, the pork was so tender and flavorful, that I called it done and took it out of the oven. Apparently, pork shoulder cooks quickly.
Bonus pic: Braised pork, just out of the oven.
