♪♪ -My name is Eric Sze. I'm the chef-owner of 886
in the East Village and wenwen in Greenpoint. Today,
I'll be making lu rou fan, which is a Taiwanese
pretty traditional braised pork belly
over rice dish. My take is not
super traditional, so don't get pissed if it's not
how your mom makes it. The first thing's first, we're
gonna blanch our pork belly. We drop it in the water. So the purpose of blanching
the pork belly is to keep its shape, as well as get rid
of any impurities, et cetera. So the pork belly, we're gonna
simmer about 30 minutes. We're going to make the dashi. So here is some kombu dried. Pop it right in. Now we're gonna add dried
shiitake mushrooms. You can rinse them if you want,
just like the kombu, but I kind of like
to just throw it in there. So now that this is going, everything is softened
a little bit. Gonna put a little lid on. So now we're gonna make
the pickled cucumbers, which is gonna be
the garnish for the dish. This dish was invented
in Taiwan during the Japanese
colonialism era. Colonialism, imperialism?
Same thing, right? During that time,
the sauce itself was invented as a garnish for different
things like over rice, over noodles. Salt. We're going to toss this guy. It softens the vegetable, and it allows it
to soak up much more flavor. And you leave it
for about 15 minutes or so, just so the water comes out. Now we're going to make
the brine. Some vinegar -- white distilled,
nothing fancy. Little soy sauce for salinity, sugar,
and a little brown sugar. Brown sugar is really a key
ingredient in Taiwanese cooking. Normally, you would use
a mixing...thing, whisk, but this is my mixing thing. Give it a good stir. So it's been about 15 minutes. The cucumbers have been
sufficiently cured. You see that? So this is what salt does
to the cucumber, and we're going to rinse it off. You see all that? That's all water
from the cucumber, and pop it
right into our marinade. Let this sit.
30 minutes, you can eat it. Preferably about three hours. The pork belly has been going
for about like 25 minutes. As you can tell,
it's pretty much fully cooked. We're gonna pull this out,
kind of let it chill out for a little bit
so it's easier to cut. Pop this in the fridge
for about like 30, 40 minutes. And now we can add the
bonito flakes into the dashi. So I actually turned off
the fire to this dashi because we want it to steep
very, very, very gentle, steep for another 10 minutes. You'd be surprised
how fast it yields its flavor. Now we're gonna strain
the dashi. Quick note -- we're gonna
have to save the mushrooms because I like
to add the mushrooms into the lu rou itself so it gives it
a nice textural contrast. So now we're gonna start
chopping our vegetables. Lu rou fan is
a deeply personal dish for, I think,
any Taiwanese person. Most of the clout
goes to beef noodle soup, but, in fact,
there are more stalls that sell lu rou fan
than there are beef noodle soup. And because beef noodle soup
didn't come until the 1950s, this dish has been around since
the early 1990s, and growing up, I would eat it
probably once a week. But I remember
there's one distinct memory where I was like, "Dude, one day when I am
financially independent, I can have all the lu rou fan
I want," and now I am
financially independent via selling lu rou fan. Shallots -- in Taiwan,
people always prefer shallots over onions
because it is sweeter. Now we get to slice. Again, super rough because it's just gonna go in
and braise. Rough chops of garlic. Ginger --
peel your ginger with a spoon. Just want to give it
a rough dice, so we slice it into
relatively thin shreds. Matchsticks. As the French people call it,
julienne. I don't know who he is,
but I think he's long and tall. That's funny. [ Laughter ]
Come on, man. Yeah. [ Laughs ] Shiitake mushrooms. Oh, this one, you actually
have to squeeze out. Cut them up into, like,
decent chunks because you want to be able
to -- to bite into it and then enjoy the nice,
squishy texture. So now it's a couple hours. The pork is super firm,
as you can see. Now we're just gonna chop it. This pork belly is super hairy,
like my brother. So what we're gonna do is use a nice torch to take off
all the surface skin. ♪♪ All you want to do
is bring it over, just so burns it enough,
but without cooking the skin. Okay? Done.
We're gonna slice them. So, we're gonna do
two different types of slices -- one like a julienne,
but a little bit thicker. The other one I'm gonna show you
is how to cut it thick. So we're gonna want it
roughly about 1/2 inch thick. Now we're just gonna --
because we blanched them, they do keep their shape
a little bit more, and it's not gonna fall apart. We're going to cut
the big pieces now. About an inch. Thick slab of pork belly
straight in half. This is going to be
our big piece. So we're going to begin by smashing the shit
out of this rock sugar because what we're gonna do
is make a caramel. Cover this. And... Think we're good.
Add a little oil into a pan. Start your fire,
and then add in your rock sugar. And let it slowly
come up to temperature. There's a very, very fine line
between [Speaks Mandarin] and just burnt sugar,
so you have to be super careful. To stop the cooking,
we're gonna add in hot water because hot water
won't splatter everywhere. If you try to stop cooking it
with cold water, you're gonna hurt yourself,
so be very careful. [ Sizzling ] And let this kind of reduce
back into a sort of a syrup. Get in. We're gonna brown
the big pieces first. It's because it's a lot easier. You're not gonna lose
as much temperature. So the purpose of steering
this pork belly really is just, like,
any braising technique. You want to seer it beforehand so you get that
deeper depth of flavor. Now, once you turn it around,
you're rewarded with this gorgeous pork belly. Look at this color. So we're gonna repeat
this entire step for the small pieces. We're gonna do batches.
Almost done. So what I'm gonna do is add a
little bit of [Speaks Mandarin] into the pork belly as its seers just so we're giving it
more color and it really can be
cohesively part of the dish. So now we're gonna take
these guys out. They're nice and caramelized. What we're gonna do is seer up
all the aromatics inside the same pot. Add the ginger first. You have the garlic,
in with the scallion, and add the
shiitake mushrooms in, as well. So these are nice and softened. We're gonna add in
the soy sauces now. It's kind of important to add in
your soy sauces before the dashi because what you want is to have
that extreme heat to kind of cook down
the soy sauce and be able to caramelize it
a little bit so you toast it and give it that
extra, extra layer of flavor. We are using two kinds
of soy sauce -- dark soy sauce and regular soy sauce. Dark soy sauce
is mainly for color, and regular soy sauce
is mainly for flavor. So now we're going to add in
all of our pork. Gingerly, not just because
there's ginger inside, but because you are careful. We're adding in the dashi. Give it a nice stir. Make sure everything is, well, evenly distributed
throughout the entire pot. We're going to add in
the five spice. Technically,
you should have toasted the five spice
with the pork belly, but I'm an idiot,
so I didn't do it. It's okay.
Not the end of the world. Shallot sauce should have been
toasted with the pork belly. I didn't do it
because I was trying to make dad jokes all night, and shallot sauce
is essentially nice and reduced shallot flavor
for that punch. The next step is
even more shallot flavor -- fried shallots. You can fry your own. Add it all in. Let it soak. So we're gonna let this cook,
kind of simmer for an hour and a half-ish, and then we're gonna add
our secret ingredient. Fast-forward hour and a half. This thing is still braising,
but I want to show you guys how to make rice
Taiwanese style. So here, this is
a Tatung [Speaks Mandarin], which is a very, very old-school
Taiwanese cooking equipment. It is essentially a steamer,
electric steamer. Has an inner pot kind of
like an Instant Pot, actually, but what is different is you add
liquid into this outer pot, where it creates steam
that cooks whatever is inside. Here, we have short-grain rice. It is extremely, extreme--
and I cannot stress enough. It is extremely important that you use short grain instead
of long grain for this dish because the bouncy-ness
of the short-grain rice just has that texture
that is so signature Taiwanese. Easy rinse. ♪♪ Literally just...one time. So the equation is really,
really simple. Roughly 1 cup goes in here. However many cups of rice
is how many cups of water for the inner pot,
and for the outer part, we just kind of add
a little bit of water. And when I'm cooking rice, what I like to do
is add a piece of star "anus." However you like
to pronounce it. It looks like an anus,
and it is a star. And you throw it in
because it's going to permeate flavor into your rice,
and a little bit of oil. Neutral oil. You can use
sesame oil if you want, but what this does,
it helps even further in the stickiness of your rice. I'm gonna let it cook. Takes about 15, 20 minutes. We have pork belly,
and as you can see, it is oily. But all you got to do
is kind of boost the heat and it will begin to emulsify. It's been going for about
an hour and a half-ish, so we're ready
for our secret ingredient -- peanut butter. What peanut butter does, it makes everything creamy
and it helps it emulsify. Think of it as like
a Dijon mustard. Straight up just dollop it in. A quick note, though -- once you've added in
the peanut butter, you have to be extra,
extra diligent with your pot of lu rou because there's so much
extra fat and sugar in here that it's gonna easily,
easily, easily burn if you're not careful. Keep an eye on it. I say, every three to
five minutes, give it a stir. It's been an hour and a half. Been slowly, slowly simmering, and you can tell
it's nice and emulsified. It's a super, super thick gravy, which is exactly
where I want it to be because it then covers every
single grain of rice equally. We're gonna slice up
some garnish. We have a little pink celery. Use it as fake cilantro. Let's see how this guy did. Fluff it. So we're going to plate
in two styles. One is the minced-up version, and one
is the big chunk version. Take rice to your bowl. The trick is to level your rice
and then kind of stab and make an indent in the middle
so your pork doesn't slide off. ♪♪ Now time for the cucumbers. Doesn't have to be fancy. A tiny bit of scallion
on the side. So this is lu rou fan
but more of the northern style. This lu rou recipe is
super, super salty and greasy. Cucumber is super acidic
and slightly sweet, so it's a really nice balance. And last but not least,
we're gonna do the big boy. ♪♪ Alright, so it's been
a grueling couple of hours. Finally, we have this ready, and now I'm going to give it
a little taste test. Mmm. The first note,
interestingly, is the bonito, and it just blends so well
with the pork and contrasts so well with the fatty pieces
because you're chewing and you're biting on the flesh
and the protein while the fat
is melting simultaneously. So it's just got so many layers. It's a little bit saltier than what you'd find
on the streets of Taipei, but then it still hits
every single note, all blending perfectly together. And the rice serves as a canvas
for this art piece. For the recipe,
click the link below. Visit me at 886 and wenwen.
Peace. I got into cooking
because my grades were too shit. Honest to God, that is how. Obviously, I love food. I mean, who doesn't
love food, right? That paired with me having, like, a D-minus average
in college, everything pointed me in the
direction of restaurant life. And here I am.
