RSS
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Google+
Spotlight
Braised Pork Belly (Dong Po Rou/东坡肉)
January 6th, 2012Recipes, Chinese New Year, Recipes, Chinese Recipes, Recipes47 Comments
Braised Pork Belly Recipe (Dongpo Rou/Dong Po Rou/东坡肉)
Equipment:
Clay pot, dutch oven or stainless steel pot
Food safety strings, optional
Ingredients:
1 lb pork belly
1 tablespoon oil
3 stalks scallions, cut into 3-inch lengths
1-inch peeled ginger, cut into slices
2-3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce or 1-2 tablespoons regular soy sauce
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
3 1/2 tablespoons Shaoxing Wine
water, enough to cover the pork belly
1 oz (or 40 g) rock sugar, lightly crushed or 2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
extra sugar, as per taste
Method:
Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the pork belly and boil for 5 minutes. Discard water, remove pork from pot, rinse and pat dry. Cut the meat into 2 1/2-inch squares. Tie the pork pieces with food safety strings as tight as possible to avoid meat from falling apart while braising.
Heat up a clay pot or stainless steel pot with oil, stir-fry the ginger and scallions until aromatic. Pour in the water and continue boiling for 10 minutes.
Add light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and wine, adequate amount of water just to cover the pork belly and boil in high heat. Mix in rock sugar, pork pieces, skin side down and cook for 5 minutes.
Lower the heat to medium-low, at a gentle simmering level, cover the pot and braise pork for 30 minutes. Turn pork skin side ‘up’, and continue braising for 1 1/2-2 hours, or until pork is tender enough to your liking. Adjust seasoning, as per taste, eg. sugar.
Dish up and serve pork with Dongpo sauce over steamed rice or buns and vegetables.
Cook’s Notes:
- After dishing out the cooked pork belly, bring the sauce to a second boil to thicken it, add sugar and other seasonings as desired.
- Food safety string is not required if you prefer to braise the whole slab of pork belly. Hence, skip the cutting part of the pork belly.
- You can use regular Shaoxing Wine for the Dongpo Pork recipe. Shaoxing ‘Hua Tiao’ wine will add a more robust and richer flavor to the dish.
Click Below for More Easy and Delicious Recipes:
SHARE THE RECIPE & PHOTOS:
This pork looks fantastic!
These safety strings add some complexity to the picture, for sure.
But a question: how the guest supposed to remove them? Is it possible to do this with just chopsticks?
That looks amazing
Isn’t that just a blob of fat?
I just made some 红烧肉 last night, I should try this recipe tonight. Yummy
Elaine, that’s how pork belly is. Streaks of fat and meat. I usually use those without skin and very little fat. Still taste good.
Elaine – exactly, that’s why pork belly is so good, fat with streaks of meat and melts in your mouth. ;)
Tsu – thanks for explaining. :)
Really tasty photos……. will be miaking this in the slow cooker…….
YUMMY! I remember have some amazing Dong Po Rou in Shanghai a few years and have thought about making it at home but never had the courage too lol I’m more of a baker ~ will definitely be referring to your recipe though!
Thanks!
Looks amazing. I am marinating two cornish hens to try your Chinese style roast chicken at the moment.
My family loves Stewed Pork Belly! In fact, I just made it for dinner last night. I also throw in some carrots and a couple of chickens thighs. I’ve discovered cooking it in a pressure cooker and it only takes 1hr to cook with the same tasty results! So yummy!
This dish is so easy to make. will try it as soon as I can get a slab of pork belly.
This is looks fantastic! Can’t wait to try them..:)
@Holly – let me know how the roast hen goes. :)
Hi Thanks for another wonderful recipe. Will Sure try to make it next weekend.
The Chinese style chicken is incredible! Had it with garlic green beans and white rice…will be making this again. Thank you!
Interesting story and recipe Bee!
We have restaurant in Bali which serve this dish, it call depot 369, i had this dish and my husband thought me how to it–sandwich the braised belly with very yummy pao *i totally forget the name:(
it really melt in the mouth :)
I tried this recipe yesterday and it was amazing.
On a side note, Dongporou is quite popular today, mainly because it was a favorite of MaoZedong, whose favorite recipe reportedly uses no soy sauce. Rumor goes that he grew up in Hunan, which had many soy sauce factories and after seeing how soy sauce was made, was not a fan of it in his food. An imperial chef was tasked with re-creating Dongporou without soy sauce and after two tries, he was in the Great Helmsman’s favor. My favorite version is served atop sweet rice nestled in a roasted small pumpkin crowned with the decadently fatty, tender meat–the gluttonous rice and sweetness of the pumpkin makes for a very tasty dish.
Bee, this pork belly looks so incredibly delicious I want to cry. Wow.
Ha, we had this at a restaurant the other day and the kids love it. we had it sandwiched betwwen pieces of pao-like mantou. I am so going to try this this week, as a good prep for CNY dinner :) Thanks Bee
I have a pot full of dong po rou (a la Filipino adobo style). I cooked two slabs of pork belly, with some very streaky pork neck chunks in a sauce made of a local chinese rice wine (in lieu of vinegar), soy sauce, garlic, ginger, peppercorns, scallions, and a couple of star anise tossed in there. Three hours braised in the oven and all that meat was soft and buttery. I have kept the pork belly in a “confit” (the fat congealed over the belly strips), and have used a few chunks to cook vegetables. It’s a divine dish, very versatile and easy to make. Long live pork!
It is available in Esquire Kitchen. We always call this dish whenever we eat there. Delicious. Think I’ll try out the recipe. Thanks.
Can’t wait until I’m eating meat again. This post has me anticipating this as my first meat meal!
This is just the sort of dish I love!! Bookmarking!
My god, look at that color,
(drooling)~
a nice recipe, but i really miss the fivespice flavor of dong po rou! so i added abt 1 tsp fivespice powder and also 1 cinnamon stick and double the amount of shaoxing wine.
Hi! When you call for dark soy sauce is this the Malaysian thick caramel sauce?
No, just black soy sauce.
hi bee! i just found out about your website when searching for the black pepper beef recipe. I found yours in http://www.mycookinghut.com when she referred to this website. I have to say that is the best black pepper recipe ever!! my husband loves it so much he asked me to cook again for him the next day lol thanks to you.
I just tried your dong po rou this evening for dinner and it’s just delicious!! i went to hang zhou once and tried this dish. A bit different from what i remember but still your recipe tastes great and that’s what matters!!
btw, i really really want to buy your book. do u know if they sell it in singapore? rather than buying from amazon (the shipping fee is like 75% of the book price for standard 18-32 days delivery!!) i literally cant wait that long! lol
please let me know, ok :) thanks
Hi Jinilia, you can get it Kinokuniya. Scroll down on this link for information: http://rasamalaysia.com/easy-chinese-recipes-cookbook/
yaaaay thanks can’t wait to buy one :)
Hi!If I wish to cook 2lb of pork belly does that mean I have to double the ingredients?
Yes.
Thank you, enjoy following your simple and yummy recipes! Keep up the good work!
Hi Bee, I tried making this the other day and the result was very, very salty. I followed your recipe down to the tee, and I am wondering if it is because I simmered it uncovered or is 1 cup of soy sauce too much?
If you read the comments, a few people had tried with successful results. If you simmer with the lit uncovered, all the water will evaporate/reduce mostly that’s why your sauce might be too salty. If you simmer with it covered, it keeps most of the water/moisture. Add more water if it’s too salty.
oh wait, I think I braised it with the pot covered. Hence, I am not sure why the recipe turned out to be so salty. Would be great if I know what went wrong as I love Dong Po Rou! Thanks!
Pingback:Braised Pork Belly | Snippets of Suri
Pingback:Why Don’t You Have The Other White Meat For Dinner? « Oh Snap! Let's Eat!
Hey Bee, I just had a go at this recipe, but found it overly overly salty even after adding a whole lot of sugar. Could there be a mistake in the amount of soy sauce used?
I used low sodium soy sauce which is very light. I updated the recipe to 1 cup low sodium soy sauce or 1/2 cup regular soy sauce. Also did your water level reduced a lot? If so, add some water to it.
Are you using an American measuring cup?
Hi thanks for the awesome recipe really been looking forward to it since moving away from singapore, it was really easy to follow but after two hours of simmering I was nowhere near the caramel looking brown in the photo? It’s the color I’m familiar with from back home so I know what Iv made is way too white, but the braising sauce tastes really good and the meat really soft too but somehow doesn’t seem to have absorbed the flavours(which the dark colour would have been an indicator that it has I mean and which I didn’t get). I don’t know if iv somehow missed a step by misunderstanding your recipe? Like after drying the pork after its been boiled is it supposed to be fried a little with the garlic and scallions before adding water? Although I don’t see what diff that would make
argh tried it again and still cant get that caramelly look, and this time the pork even had a weird taste to it, like the pork version of ‘gamey’ if you get what i mean, kind of like the smell that comes up when boiling off the dirt or whatever that is at the start of the process, except this time for some reason it was still in the pork even after letting it boil for 15 minutes or slightly more, it was just the other half of the same slab i used before, left in the regular fridge, shouldnt have spoilt or anything, any idea what im doing wrong?
I am not sure, it sounds like you didn’t cook it enough?
well i cooked it for 2 hours both times, only slightly brown looking, left it for at least another hour, every so slightly more brown, not what i would even call medium brown, at this point the meat is so soft that it falls apart really easily in my mouth but just is not what i would call dong po rou, or any of the sort of chinese braised pork
Pingback:Why Don't You Have The Other White Meat For Dinner? « mindsome