My Family’s Braised Pork with Potatoes
Ingredients
- 1 plate Pork belly
- 1 plate Potato chunks
- 2 stalks Scallions
- 1 tsp Salt
- to taste Light soy sauce
- 1 splash Cooking wine
- to taste Water
Instructions
- Prep the ingredients: peel the potatoes and cut into roll-cut chunks. Rinse briefly to wash off excess starch. Remove the pork skin and cut into roll-cut chunks; separate out the fatty pieces (no need to be precise). Any pork with some fat will work, not just pork belly. Wash the scallions; cut out the white parts whole (don’t chop), and cut the remaining green parts into long sections.
- Place the fatty pork pieces into a dry wok with nothing added. Render the pork fat over high heat first; once a little oil appears, turn to low heat and keep rendering until the fat turns into golden-brown cracklings and a pool of lard collects at the bottom of the wok.
- Add the pork to the wok and stir-fry over high heat for a short while until it turns white. Splash in a little cooking wine to remove any gaminess (just a splash from the wok spatula), then stir-fry a few more times.
- Add the potatoes to the wok and stir-fry until evenly coated with the lard. Add a little salt (slightly less than a teaspoon) — since soy sauce will be added later, use less salt here to avoid over-salting. Adjust to your own taste and the amount of ingredients. Stir-fry a few more times to distribute the salt evenly.
- Pour water into the wok — not too much, just enough to cover the potatoes (see photo). Drop in the scallion whites. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium-low heat, cover, and simmer until the potatoes are soft and tender and the liquid has reduced significantly.
- It’s ready for soy sauce when it looks like this. Test for doneness: a chopstick should slide into the potatoes easily.
- Add soy sauce to taste for color and savory flavor. Turn the heat back up to high and add the scallion greens.
- If the potatoes aren’t quite done yet, cover and simmer a bit longer. If they’re already soft and cooked through, keep the heat on high and toss briefly to reduce the sauce, then serve.
- Done!
