China · Shaanxi
Shangzhi Braised Pork
Pork belly simmered, fried to colour the skin and steamed for hours with mountain ferns, ginger and egg skin in a clear broth.
This dish belongs to Shang County in Shaanxi, a valley town long known for the wild ferns that grow on its slopes. The pork is boiled, deep-fried to colour the skin, then steamed under a weight of broth and aromatics for hours, a banquet method still used across north-west China. The number of stages is the point: each one lays down a flavour that the next cannot supply on its own.
Ingredients
- skin-on pork belly500 g
- mountain fern50 g
- scallion10 g
- ginger2 g
- star anise3 pieces
- honey15 g
- vinegar5 g
- cooking wine15 g
- MSG1.5 g
- soy sauce10 g
- thin omelet sheet, about one sheet15 g
- fine salt1 g
- chicken broth200 g
- sesame oil10 g
- rendered lard60 g
Directions
- 1
Scrub the pork clean, boil it until about two-thirds done so the surface turns pale, lift it out and while it is hot rub the skin with honey and vinegar.
- 2
Heat the lard in a wok over a high flame until about eighty percent hot, roughly two hundred degrees, when the smoke is heavy and the surface still. Put the pork in skin side down and fry until golden-red, then move it to a pot of cold water to soften. Lay it on the board and cut it into slices ten centimeters long and six millimeters thick, still skin side down, and pack the slices neatly into a steaming bowl.
- 3
Cut five grams of scallion into lengths of two and a half centimeters and another five grams into diagonal slices of the same length. Peel and wash the ginger; cut one and a half grams into slices and five grams into mince. Cut the omelet sheet into two-and-a-half-centimeter isosceles triangles.
- 4
Blanch the mountain fern in boiling water until soft, discard the tough stems and grit, wash it clean and cut it into three-centimeter lengths. Put it in a bowl with five grams of soy sauce, one gram of fine salt and ten grams of lard and mix; spread it over the pork. In a small bowl mix one hundred grams of chicken broth with five grams of soy sauce, half a gram of fine salt and fifteen grams of cooking wine, and pour it into the steaming bowl. Add the ginger slices, scallion lengths and star anise and steam over a high flame for about half an hour, then switch to low heat for another hour and a half until thoroughly tender. Lift out, remove the ginger, scallion and star anise, pour off and strain the juices, and turn the pork out onto a soup plate.
- 5
Heat one hundred grams of chicken broth in the wok with the strained juices, add the minced ginger, sliced scallion and MSG and stir, then add the omelet, drizzle with sesame oil and pour everything over the pork.
Source: HowToCook · WorldBite adaptation · Unlicense source text; bilingual recipe adapted by WorldBite.