Chashu - Japanese braised pork

The side effect of watching Chang’s cooking episodes is that whenever I saw or tasted something delicious I thought ” this is insane” & then laughed at myself. I like him, like his sense of humor. He is so real and honest.

When I look at the picture of Momofuku ramen, I’m so into Chashu that I searched for the recipe how to make it. Luckily, I found it on Just one cook book, where she gave the step by step instructions.

It tastes like Vietnamese style caramel pork but sweeter due to sake and mirin. The sweet and salt combination is so umami with ginger infused. The ingredients I used is a bit different, I don’t know what to do with the left-over of Ajitsuke tamago’s marinade from yesterday so I add some sake, salt, and ginger to use for Chashu.

Recipe is inspired and adapted from the original one justonecookbook

Ingredients

544 g pork belly

1 tsp salt

1 bulb of spring onion

1 tbsp oil

For the sauce

1/3 cup soy sauce

3/4 cup water

1/3 cup sake

1 tbsp mirin

1/2 tbsp brown sugar + 2 tbsps white sugar

1 tsp salt

6 slices of ginger

Directions

1.     Cut spring onion into 2 inch lengths and separate the green parts and white parts. Slice all the white parts and a few green parts thinly. (slicing a few green parts is optional, Shiraga Negi indicates only the sliced white part of spring onion, but I would like to keep a few green pieces to make it colorful).

2.     Soak in cold water for 10 minutes and drain well. Put it in an air-tight container or cover with plastic wrap. We will use this for garnishing later. 

3.     The rest of the green parts will be used later on for cooking.

4.     Peel and slice ginger.

5.     Clean and dry pork belly with kitchen paper. Sprinkle and rub the salt on the pork belly.

6.     Heat the oil in a frying pan over high heat and brown the fat side first, then flip over to brown the other side. It’ll take about 10 minutes.

7.     While browning, put all the ingredients for seasonings in a pot.

8.     Place the pork belly in the pot and add ginger and spring onion and bring it to a boil.

9.     Place a lid on top of the pot, but only cover about 8/10 part of it.

10.  Lower the heat to medium low and simmer, occasionally turning, for about one hour or until there is ¼ inch liquid left in the pot.

11.  Remove the lid and reduce the sauce until you can see the bottom of the pot when you scrape the sauce. Stay in the kitchen as the meat can easily get burnt if there is no liquid left. After 15-20 minutes or so, bubbles start to appear. You are getting close to the end. Turn off the heat when you see the bottom of the pot when you slide the meat around. The sauce is now thickened and meat is shiny.

12.  Take out the meat and cut into thin slices.

13.  Transfer to a serving plate and top with Shiraga Negi.

      

      If you don’t use the chashu right away, pack the chashu and the sauce in an air-tight plastic bag to give it more flavors all around. You can store it in the refrigerator up to 5 days and 3 weeks in the freezer.