Description
Visit www.pork.org/realpork for more recipe ideas!
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Instructions
- Lay pork belly on a work surface, skin side down. Roll pork belly tightly into a log. Tie tightly with kitchen twine, to hold log together.
- Heat a large dutch oven or thick bottom pot over high heat; add pork belly log and sear evenly all sides until crispy golden brown color.
- Meanwhile, combine sugar, soy sauce, mirin, sake and 3 cups water in a large mixing bowl or measuring cup – where you can pour liquid easily to pot. Stir until sugar dissolved completely.
- Pour sauce mixture to pot along with ginger, garlic and leek/green onions. Stir and turn around so pork belly can be braised evenly in sauce. Bring it to boil without cover. When it’s boiling, cover, reduced to heat to medium high and simmer 1 hour and 30 minutes. Then reduce heat to medium low and simmer for additional 30 minutes. Roll around pork in sauce every 20 minutes so pork will cook and absorb sauce evenly.
- After pork is done cooking, sauce is not reduced enough to cover back of spoon, remove lid and increase heat to high to reduce sauce to nice and thick.
- Now, remove from heat and let it cool for 30 minutes. When it’s cooled down enough to handle, place pork log into a plastic bag with 1 cup of sauce. Close tightly and place in a refrigerator over night. Without this step, there’s a risk that pork might not keeping its shape after slice.
- Remove twine only the part you are going to use at a time. Slice pork chashu into desired thickness and sear them by pan frying on a dry pan over hight heat, grill or torch. Serve top of your favorite ramen, warm cooked rice or in-between steamed bao.
Notes
If you’d like to make tare (sauce) for ramen, strain leftover liquid- it will be about 1 1/2 cup. Mix with 2 tbsp salt and it’s ready to use for bump up your ramen! Or you can just keep strained liquid as it is to serve on top of rice!
- Cook Time: 2 hours
