扒肉条酸菜
I had this dish for the first time at a restaurant in 呼和浩特 called 德顺元. It was my first time having anything quite like it. At its core, the idea behind this dish is that you have very fatty braised pork belly that's been seared / fried on the skin side, thinly sliced, and served atop something tart like 酸菜. The tartness helps cut into the fattiness of the pork, and allows you to enjoy the intense savoriness of the fat without feeling like it's too greasy. Interestingly, I can't seem to find recipes for this anywhere online -- 扒肉条 seems to be a dish of thinly sliced meat in of itself, and in 酸菜 dishes it's usually always white-braised pork belly (i.e. without soy sauce or cooking wine). It's a little trickier than you might expect to make, but it makes for a delicious dish / meal.
Active Time: 30 min
Total Time: 30 min
Ingredients
> braised pork belly
> braising liquid
> pork fat.
> 酸菜
> vermicelli noodles
> ginger (1 inch, thinly sliced)
> garlic (3 cloves, minced)
> scallions (2 stalks, roughly chopped)
> star anise (2)
> (optional) 海米
Instructions
1. Prepare some braised pork belly, ideally in large slabs (this will make it easiest to fry / slice). Use your typical pork belly braising technique with soy sauce, sugar, Shaoxing wine, and miscellaneous spices.
2. Rinse the 酸菜 several times to take out some of the excess acidity, and squeeze it dry.
3. In a wok, fry the ginger, garlic, scallions, star anise, and 海米 in pork fat for ~30s
4. Add the 酸菜 and stir-fry for ~10 minutes over medium heat. Ideally, you'd want to fry out most of the liquid in the vegetables. Add more pork fat if needed.
5. Add some water to cover, add the vermicelli noodles, then let stew for a while.
6. In the meantime, shallow-fry the pork belly for a few minutes. Remove from the heat, then thinly slice lengthwise into long slices.
7. Add the mangled pieces to the soup. Reserve the nicely sliced pieces for later.
8. Serve everything in a large serving bowl, then arrange the pork belly on top. Enjoy!
Notes/Tips:
> Err on choosing cuts of pork belly with more fat for this one. After all, the whole point of the dish is to enjoy the savoriness of the fatty meat
> The next time I try making this, I definitely want to try to get some proper suan cai, maybe from a northeastern chinese restaurant in SF. It just isn't the same when making it with pre-made suan cai from a Chinese grocery store.
> This is a great way to use up leftover pork belly / braising liquid / fat that's too fatty to eat by itself!
> Warning: the pork belly will probably splatter quite a bit when shallow-frying it skin-side, be careful. That part I still haven't quite gotten down.