The Sinosphere · Volume 34, The Chilli Jar, the Smoke Room and the Mountain the Tusi Ruled
Xiaochao rou
Hunan, everywhere
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 15 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Everywhere. Chinese sources describe this, not the fish head or the dry-pot rabbit, as the most-ordered, most universally cooked dish in the whole province.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 350 g pork belly, roughly 7 parts fat to 3 parts lean, sliced thin
- 250 g green pointed chilli (or a mix of green finger and bird's-eye), cut on the diagonal
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 tbsp fermented black beans (douchi), rinsed
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce, a good one
- to taste salt to taste
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
Method
- Heat a dry, or near-dry, wok until properly hot, add the oil, then the pork.
- Sear the pork hard, undisturbed for the first minute, until the fat renders and the edges take on a "tiger-skin" char.
- Push the pork aside, add the garlic and douchi to the rendered fat, stir-fry until fragrant.
- Add the chilli, cut on the diagonal so it holds texture rather than collapsing, and stir-fry hard for 2 minutes.
- Combine everything, season with the soy sauce and salt, and serve immediately, the chilli still with real bite.
What a modern chef changes
The sear as the whole dish, engineered for consistency.
Rung 6
Method
- Render the pork fat separately first, low and slow in a pan until the fat is fully rendered and the meat pieces are lightly crisped, reserving the fat.
- Reheat the rendered fat to genuinely high heat before the chilli goes in, so the vegetable takes on real char in under 90 seconds rather than steaming in its own moisture in a pan that has cooled while the pork was cooking.
- Choose soy sauce as the one variable worth spending on: Chinese home cooks name it, consistently, as the single biggest lever in this specific dish, more than the chilli variety or the fat ratio.