Main ingredients

400 grams of eel and 250 grams of bacon (if you have a large family, you can slightly increase the amount of raw materials)

Accessories

8 heads of garlic, 10 grams of ginger, 4 dried chili peppers, 2 star anise, 10 ml of soy sauce, 10 ml of cooking wine, 5 ml of light soy sauce, appropriate amount of salt, and appropriate amount of chicken essence.

Braised eel with bacon.

Step 1

Cut the purchased eel, wash it, and soak it in water for 20 minutes. Soaking is to remove the blood from the eel.

Step 2

Take out the soaked eel, rinse and drain.

Step 3

Slice the bacon into slices, preferably both fat and lean. The fried eel with such bacon will be particularly fragrant. If you don’t have bacon, you can ignore this step and make a pure braised eel

Step 4

Put the dried chili pepper, star anise, shredded ginger and garlic into a hot oil pan and stir-fry .

Step 5

Stir-fry over low heat until fragrant, add bacon, and continue to stir-fry for two minutes.

Step 6

Add the eel. You can place the eel in the middle and fry it. After the eel meat changes color, fry it together with the bacon.

Step 7

Add water until the water covers the meat. Then bring to a boil, then turn to low heat and simmer for 12 minutes.

Step 8

After stewing, you can add a few pieces of green pepper and red pepper slices and continue to stir-fry for a few times. When the juice is reduced, take it out of the pot and garnish with chopped green onion.

As a reminder, since this dish has many ingredients, it is best to prepare all the ingredients before cooking, such as chili pepper, garlic, bay leaves, ginger, star anise, etc. to avoid frying the eel without ingredients later. It's not fragrant enough.

Cooking tips for braised eel

Because bacon contains high salt content, you don’t need to add salt; if you accidentally add too much salt, this braised eel will turn into pickles.

Add green pepper slices before collecting the juice, which can be a good garnish for the dish.