I've been making this dish, or at least a version of it, since my bachelor days. In fact, I wrote a recipe on this blog about 13 years ago (see it here). I've since been told not to use that name, and I now have better tools than my old single-coil electric stove. This one is for the Instant Pot which, as you'll see if you read the recent posts on this blog, has been my galley gear of choice these days. It also borrows some elements from this recipe for 红烧肉 (hong shao rou), which is another dish I want to try making.
Ingredients
1 kilo pork belly, cubed
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic, chopped
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups coconut water
1/4 cup fish sauce
ground pepper
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
canola oil
1. On Saute, heat up a bit of oil then add the sugar. In my experience it started out a bit clumpy, but it eventually started to melt. When the hot oil-sugar mixture is mostly melted (with a few clumps) add a mixture of 1/4 cup fish sauce and 1/4 cup coconut water. Heat this up and use this to fully dissolve the sugar.
2. Add chopped onion and garlic and simmer until you can smell the aromatics through the caramel and fish sauce.
3. Add the pork and generously season with pepper. Simmer a bit until pork is a bit browned/denatured on all sides.
4. Add 1 cup coconut water, star anise, and cinnamon. Simmer for a while. Then, if you have time (I did), Slow Cook for 4 hours. This will help extract all the flavours.
5. Check tenderness of meat. If needed, Pressure Cook on High for about 20 minutes and NPR until meat is very soft and fat is rendered.
6. Continue simmering on Saute until desired sauce thickness.
You may add hardboiled eggs or tofu in step #6 for a more festive dish (they do serve this for Tet). Serve with steamed rice and greens.
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