Pork Belly for Ramen | Chāshū | チャーシュー

Chāshū is my favorite meat ingredient for ramen. Just like ramen, it came to Japanese cuisine from China and transformed into a very different dish. Originally, char siu 叉燒 is a kind of barbecued pork in Cantonese cuisine. In Japan, it is a meaty pork belly slowly cooked in a flavorful broth. At the end of cooking, the pork belly loses a lot of fat and becomes very tender and soft. Every bite of chashu melts in the mouth. For ramen, chashu is served thinly sliced. A very similar Japanese recipe for pork belly to serve it with cooked rice, hot mustard sauce, and pickled vegetables is called Buta no Kakuni (豚の角煮, “pork cut square and simmered”). For both recipes, pork belly can be skinless or with pigskin, based on personal preferences and availability. Chāshū is famous for its amazingly tender, melting in the mouth texture and highly appealing aromas. Even though we start making it with one of the fattiest cuts of pork, a lot of fat is rendered away during the cooking. It can be slowly rendered on a dry skillet (see instructions in the recipe below) or boiled with okara, soybean pulp left after straining soy milk. Slowly is the keyword here. The ratio is about 5-6oz of okara to 1lb of pork belly. In a pot, cover pork belly portions with cold water 1″ over the top of the meat and stir in the soybean pulp. Bring water to boiling, reduce the heat, and simmer for 2 to 4 hours. Cool the contents of the pot to room temperature and then refrigerate to solidify the fat. Carefully remove pork pieces, rinse them with warm water, and cook in a flavored broth. Using a stove at the beginning and an oven at the end is probably the most widely accepted way of cooking pork belly, but slow cookers are obviously are perfect devices for the task. Sous vide also comes to mind, though the only advantage it gives is using cooking broth more economically. It is, naturally, a perfect way of cooking lean cuts (e.g., pork loin) with chāshū flavor.

Unbalanced

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet