Thursday, May 10, 2012

Deep Fried Pork Belly

I've been trying to perfect a recipe for pork belly for a few months, ever since I went to Taiwan. So last night I picked up some at the whopping price of $2.39/lb
Chopped up half of the pork belly into strips, these 5 strips is about 1/2 a pound worth.
Here I'm using Google docs on my iPad which is sitting on a business card holder as a makeshift iPad stand. The recipe is at the bottom of this post.
Boil the pork belly strips for 10mins.


while that's boiling, time to make the flavoring stuff:
Soy Sauce, 1/4 cup.
Vinegar, 1/4 cup (I didn't have the right kind exactly, but it's asian-y rice vinegar, so that should work)
Ideally rock sugar is used, but I had organic Trader Joe's sugar, so that did the job. 1/4 cup.
I didn't have ginger, so I turned to the western cure for lack of ginger, garlic!

lastly, green onions.

Put everything in a pot, turn on the heat, dissolve the sugar, so it's read when the pork has done 10 mins in the boiling water.
The pork belly has boiled for 10 minutes
Plop the pork belly in the mix, and add water so that the meat is just about covered.
I like to throw in a few eggs to this mix, they suck up the flavor of the mix and the pork.
This simmers for about 2hrs.
A shot of the pork belly after 2 hours in the bath.
Next up, the deep fry. I cut up a small red potato to fry after the pork belly because I'm a sucker for french fries.
Deep frying lasted for about 1 minute. This provided a slight crisp to the exterior of the pork belly. Next time I will try to deep fry for 2-3 minutes and see if I can achieve a more crunchy crisp.
A few shots of the fried pork belly.
I made some rice and veggies to go with my deep fried goodness. The egg didn't hit the frier either, I cooled it in water then peeled it after the 2hr simmer

The first recipe is what I started off with. It's a recipe that I've used to make pork belly previously, which turned out well. The second recipe is what I did here. Instead of browning the pork belly in a fry pan, I wanted to use my new Presto Fry Daddy deep fry bucket.


The pork belly was fantastic. I feared that the amount of sugar used was too much, but the flavor and texture was fantastic. The egg was delicious too!

Chinese Pork Belly

Ingredients
  • 1/2 pound raw pork belly
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1/8 cup light soy sauce
  • 1/8 cup dark soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup Chinese rice cooking wine
  • 2 ounces Chinese rock sugar
  • 1 (1/2 inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
  • 4 spring onions, sliced
  • 3 eggs

Directions
  1. Slice the pork belly into 2-inch wide strips. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and stir in the pork slices; reduce heat to a simmer, and cook the meat for 10 minutes. Remove from the water, and blot dry with paper towels.
  2. Heat the vegetable oil over medium-high heat in a large wok, and brown the pork strips well on all sides. Pork will splatter - use a splatter shield for this step.
  3. While pork is browning, mix together the light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, rice wine, rock sugar, ginger, and spring onions in a large soup pot or stockpot. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and lay the pork strips into the liquid. Cover, and simmer until the meat is very tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Add water as needed to keep the liquid from going completely dry.
Deep Fried Chinese Pork Belly

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound raw pork belly
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium)
  • 1/4 cup Chinese rice cooking wine
  • 1/2 cup organic sugar
  • 4-5 cloves of garlic minced
  • 4 spring onions, sliced
  • 3 eggs


  • Directions
    1. Slice the pork belly into 2-inch wide strips. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and stir in the pork slices; reduce heat to a simmer, and cook the meat for 10 minutes. Remove from the water, and blot dry with paper towels.
    2. While pork is browning, mix together the soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, garlic, and spring onions in a large soup pot or stockpot.
    3. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and lay the pork strips into the liquid. Add eggs to the mixture.
    4. Cover, and simmer until the meat is very tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Add water as needed to keep the liquid from going completely dry.
    5. After 1 1/2 to 2 hours, take pork pieces out of simmer and pat dry. deep fry for 1 min.

    4 comments:

    gaga said...

    yummers!

    Da Curious One said...

    yummy! what a nice recipe you have there :)

    Mr. Tamayo said...

    Awesome! How was the egg?

    jmz said...

    You had me at "deep fried pork belly"

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