Name: Hong Shao Rou (Red-Braised Pork Belly)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 h 10 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 3 servings
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 600 g Pork belly; 1 stalk Green onion; 4 slices Ginger; 3 cloves Garlic; 2 Star anise; 2 Dried red chili; 1 tbsp Cooking oil; 3 tbsp Sugar; 2 tbsp Soy sauce; 1 tbsp Dark soy sauce; 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine; 2 cups Hot water; Salt

Ingredients

3servings

Pork belly · in one piece, skin-on if possible600 g
Green onion · in chunks1 stalk
Ginger4 slices
Garlic3 cloves
Star anise2
Dried red chili · optional2
Cooking oil1 tbsp
Sauce
Sugar · rock sugar for extra gloss3 tbsp
Soy sauce2 tbsp
Dark soy sauce · for color1 tbsp
Shaoxing wine3 tbsp
Hot water2 cups
Salt · to taste

Steps

Cut the pork belly into 3cm cubes and blanch 3 minutes in boiling water to remove impurities, then rinse.
⏲ 7 min
Melt the sugar in a little oil over low heat until it turns amber caramel — watch it doesn't burn.
⏲ 3 min
Add the pork and stir to coat in the caramel, browning the surfaces.
⏲ 4 min
Add the wine, soy sauce, and dark soy, then the green onion, ginger, garlic, star anise, and chili.
⏲ 2 min
Pour in hot water to just cover, bring to a boil, cover, and braise on low 45-60 minutes.
⏲ 50 min
When the pork is tender, uncover and reduce over high heat until the sauce glazes the meat.
⏲ 7 min
Top with sliced green onion. Serve with hot rice.

Variations

With eggs: Braise boiled eggs alongside to soak up the sauce.
With potato or radish: Add for a brothier braise.
Dongpo style: Use larger pieces and steam long until chopstick-tender.
Spicy: Add doubanjiang or more dried chili.

Tips

Blanch the pork first to remove impurities for a clean-tasting sauce.
Caramelizing the sugar and coating the pork is the key to the red gloss and depth.
Braise low and slow so the fat turns silky and jelly-soft.
A final high-heat reduction lacquers the sauce onto the meat.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

The caramel is there for colour and depth, not sweetness. Three tablespoons of sugar taken to amber is not three tablespoons of sugar any more: what sugar does sets out the ladder, and by the amber stage a good part of the sweetness has broken down into colour and bitter aromatics. That is what keeps a dish with this much sugar in it savoury, and why melting it dry first is not interchangeable with stirring sugar into the braising liquid.
What turns silky is the collagen, not the fat. Pork belly is layers of fat separated by sheets of connective tissue, and it is those sheets converting to gelatin over an hour that give the jelly-soft texture — the fat itself only melts (braising). Which is why skin-on is worth seeking out, why the piece must be cut before braising rather than after, and why an hour at a bare simmer beats forty minutes at a boil. Jokbal is built on the same conversion.
The gloss is those two things meeting. The final uncovered reduction concentrates the caramel and the dissolved gelatin together, and a liquid carrying both lacquers rather than merely coating — which is also why the sauce sets to a sticky film on the plate as it cools. Char siu arrives at a similar surface by the opposite route: a sugar glaze painted on and blasted dry, rather than a sauce reduced onto the meat.
Blanching first, and its neighbours. Blanquette de veau explains why the first water is thrown away — surface protein and grey scum, so the liquid that becomes the sauce stays clean. Dongpo rou sets out the three differences from this dish (cubes against whole squares, submerged against two-thirds up, pan caramel against dark soy and rock sugar), and beef noodle soup is the same red-braise applied to beef.

The basics behind this dish

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