Braised Pork

Pork shoulder braised gently with rock sugar, with chestnuts added near the end.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg pork shoulder, in 5 cm chunks
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 30 g rock sugar
• 3 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
• 4 slices ginger
• 2 bay leaves
• 800 ml hot water
• 300 g cooked peeled chestnuts

Method

1. Brown the pork in the oil in batches, giving each piece room. Crowded meat steams and goes grey.
2. Return it all to the pan, add the rock sugar, and let it melt among the meat. Rock sugar dissolves slowly and is not being caramelised here — it sweetens and gives the sauce its shine without the darkness a burnt caramel brings.
3. Add the soy sauce, wine, ginger and bay leaves, then the hot water to come about three quarters up the meat.
4. Simmer covered for 90 minutes, until a chunk will break against the side of a spoon.
5. Add the chestnuts and cook another 20 minutes, uncovered. They go in late on purpose: given the full hour and a half they collapse into the sauce and thicken it to paste.
6. If the sauce is still thin, lift the meat and chestnuts out and boil it down on its own for a few minutes before pouring it back.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes