Mei Cai Braised Pork

“I haven’t eaten this dish for a long, long time. When I was a kid, my family would definitely have such a big meat dish to satisfy my cravings during the Chinese New Year. Maybe in recent years, it has become more and more popular. It’s getting better, we eat more elaborately during the New Year, and there are more high-end ingredients such as seafood on the table. Dishes like this, which dominated the New Year’s banquet back then, are gradually being abandoned.”

Ingredients details

Main ingredients

800g pork belly

60g prunes

Accessories

Four slices of ginger

Five chives

Two star anise

Ten dried chilies

Ingredients

One teaspoon salt

One tablespoon of dark soy sauce

One teaspoon of five-spice powder

Two teaspoons of honey

One tablespoon of light soy sauce

Two tablespoons of cooking wine< /p>

Salty and fresh taste

Steaming process

One hour of time

Easy difficulty

Mei Cai with pork Steps

1

Prepare raw materials. Wash the dried prunes and soak them in sand overnight.

2

Wash the pork belly, soak it for half an hour, blanch it, and wash and pull out any remaining hair.

3

Mix one tablespoon of dark soy sauce and two teaspoons of honey and brush it on the meat. Marinate for ten minutes.

4

Use kitchen paper to wipe off the water on the surface of the meat. Put oil in the pan and fry until golden brown.

5

Cut onion, ginger, and red pepper into rings and set aside.

6

Put oil in the wok and sauté onion, ginger, star anise and dried chili until fragrant.

7

Pour in the prunes, salt, five-spice powder, one tablespoon of light soy sauce, and two tablespoons of cooking wine. Stir-fry evenly over low heat to reduce the juice and set aside.

8

The fried pork belly is sliced ??into any thickness. Put it in a bowl.

9

Put the fried prunes on top and steam or simmer in a casserole for 2 hours. A pressure cooker is better and saves trouble.

10

Strain the soup and set aside in another bowl. Place the pickled vegetables and meat upside down on a plate.

11

Thicken the remaining soup, add some MSG to enhance the flavor and pour it over the meat.

Tips

Afterword:

1. Oil is more likely to splash out during the frying process. So make sure there is no water in the pot or on the meat. You can buy this kind of meat in large supermarkets, and you can also just use the "fat-free meat" to make it.

2. The plum vegetables must be soaked thoroughly, otherwise they will be hard when steamed.

3. The more this dish is cooked, the better it tastes.

4. This time I used rib pork belly, so it’s not easy to cut. You can buy large cubes of pork belly, which is easier to cut thinly.

5. When frying the meat, put the skin down first. If the meat is fried longer, it will feel like tiger skin.