The Sinosphere · Volume 29, The Delta, the Salt Road and the Mountain Behind It
Dongpo rou, Dongpo pork
Hangzhou
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 3 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Hangzhou, by way of a poet's exile in Hubei. This volume's Zhejiang dish, however often it turns up on a Shanghai menu.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 3 hours minimum.
Ingredients
- 750 g pork belly, in one piece, skin on
- 35 g rock sugar
- 25 g ginger, sliced
- 75 g soy sauce
- 100 g Shaoxing wine
- 50 g spring onion
Method
- Blanch the pork belly whole, then cut into large, even squares, roughly 5cm.
- Line the base of a heavy pot with the spring onion and ginger, and set the pork squares, skin side down, on top.
- Add the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine and rock sugar. Add no water at all.
- Cover and braise on very low heat for at least two hours, undisturbed.
- Transfer to a sealed clay pot and steam through for a further hour, for a total minimum of three hours, until the pork is meltingly tender and the skin glossy.
What a modern chef changes
The same "low flame, little water" discipline, held with modern tools.
Rung 1
Method
- Sous vide the braised squares at 85°C for a further 8 hours after the initial stovetop braise, guaranteeing even, fall-apart tenderness without any risk of catching.
- Reduce the reserved braising liquid separately to a genuine self-forming glaze, no added starch, exactly as Rung 1's hongshao discipline demands, then glaze the pork under a torch just before serving.
- Steam in individual small clay pots rather than one large one, for a properly restaurant-plated single portion with its own concentrated pool of sauce.