Braised Pork Belly recipe

Red braised pork belly or hong shao rou (simplified Chinese: 红烧肉; traditional Chinese: 紅燒肉; pinyin: hóngshāoròu) is a classic pork dish from China, red-cooked using pork belly and a combination of ginger, garlic, aromatic spices, chilies, sugar, star anise, light and dark soy sauce, and rice wine. The pork belly is cooked until the fat and skin are gelatinous, soft, and melt easily in the mouth, while the sauce is usually thick, sweet and fairly sticky.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Cut the pork belly into 3/4 inch thick pieces.
  2. Then bring a pot of water to a boil. Blanch the pork for a couple minutes. This gets rid of impurities and starts the cooking process. Take the pork out of the pot and set aside.
  3. Over low heat, add oil and sugar to your wok. Melt the sugar slightly and add the pork. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the pork is lightly browned.
  4. Turn the heat back down to low and add Shaoxing cooking wine, regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and water.
  5. Cover and simmer over medium heat for about 45 minutes to 1 hour until pork is fork tender.
  6. And then, it's time to eat!

Sources

Image Gallery

Recipe Sites

  1. Shanghai-Style Braised Pork Belly

    This site offers a detailed explanation for cooking braised pork belly, with pictures included for each step. It also includes a checklist for ingredients and instructions at the end.

    However, betweem each step, the site could provide clearer visual indication to inform the users that they have entered the next step. Also, the actual content only takes about half of the screen, while irrelavant advertisement takes the rest.

  2. Braised Pork Belly with Pickled Radishes

    This site is more visually concise and clear. It not only clearly labels step by step instructions and ingredients, but also provides active and total preparation time.

    However, it would be better if they could provide some pictures for each step so that it would be easier for users to follow.

  3. Red Braised Pork Belly

    This site provides a more detailed explanation into the background of braised pork belly. It also includes references to similar dishes for interested readers. In addition to concise instructions, the author provides kindly notes to help first-time cookers.

Referece Sites

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