The Sinosphere · Volume 36, The Millet Before the Rice, the Noodle a Retreat Invented, and the Tea the Whole World Copied
Lu rou fan, braised pork rice
North and central Taiwan, Hoklo
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour, mostly unattended.
Ingredients
- 600g pork belly, sliced 1cm thick then diced
- 30g fried shallots
- 100g soy sauce
- 30g rock sugar
- to taste five-spice powder, white pepper, rice wine, to taste
- to serve steamed rice, to serve
Method
- Fry the diced pork belly over medium heat until its own fat renders clear.
- Add the fried shallots and caramelise the rock sugar into the rendered fat before anything else goes in; this step is what separates an unctuous lu rou fan from a flat one.
- Add the soy sauce, five-spice, pepper and a splash of rice wine, then enough water or stock to cover.
- Bring to the boil, then simmer gently until the meat is fully tender and the sauce has reduced to a glossy coating, roughly 45 minutes to an hour depending on the dice size.
- Spoon generously over steamed rice.
Notes
On the name and its history. Cao Ming-tsung's account, honestly caveated by Cao himself, is that this dish only became viable as a proper street food once Penglai (japonica) rice, introduced under Japanese rule, gave Taiwanese diners a rice sticky enough to actually hold a spooned sauce; no reference to the dish by this name has turned up in earlier records, so treat this as the best available inference, not a documented invention date. In the north and centre the meat is hand-cut into small dice, as above; in the south the same style of dish is usually called rou zao fan and the meat is more often machine-minced, while "lu rou fan" in the south can mean what the north calls gua rou fan or kong rou fan, a large braised slab of belly over rice rather than diced meat.
What a modern chef changes
The glaze, engineered rather than guessed at
Rung 3, Rung 2
Method
- Cook the pork belly sous vide first, for perfectly even tenderness through the dice, then finish it in a fast, hard reduction of the braising liquid for glaze and colour rather than a single long simmer.
- Grind the five-spice fresh, from whole star anise, clove, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper and fennel, immediately before use, for a sharper aromatic lift than a tin of pre-ground spice gives.
- Reduce the braising liquid separately to a standalone glaze, judged by sheen and drip rather than by a fixed time, and spoon it over the rice and meat only at the point of serving.