Hello everyone, I am Wang Gang
In this video, I am sharing with you a specialty dish
Rice cooker red braised pork
First, we prepare a large piece of fresh and bouncy pork belly
If you don’t like pork belly, you can also choose "Er Dao Rou" (pork hind leg top cut)
Then we add some water into the tray
Next, we start torching the skin
We will torch and burn the skin to black color first
The first time is to remove the hair
The second time is to torch the skin until it is yellow
The third time is to torch it until it is black
Adding water in the tray is to prevent the tray to deform while being heated
After torching it black, we use stainless steel scrubber or knife
To remove the burnt part and wash it clean
After cleaning the meat, we can start dividing the meat
First, the part that has nipples is very easy to separate into layers
But it has a lot of lean meat
The last part has a lot more fat
The middle part is not too lean or too fat, but firm
Then we will take the middle part to continue cooking
Put the pork belly into rice cooker and add some water
Add some red wine
Prepare a couple spring onions, cut into chunks and add them in
Prepare a small piece of ginger and slice it for later use
Then power it up and cook the pork belly
This process could take various amounts of time depending on which rice cooker you use
About 20 mins later, you can take the meat out if chopsticks can penetrate it
Put some salt on the pork after taking it out
Next, we start to fry the skin
We heat up the wok first
After the wok is heated, add a scoop of vegetable oil
When the oil is about 180 Celsius, fry the pork with skin down until its golden brown
This step is to make sure the red braised pork will be soft, but the skin doesn’t fall apart
After it is golden brown, put it on the tray skin down
Then prepare another smaller tray on top of it
You can also use a heavy object or tape to tighten it
After pressing the pork firm, put it into the freezer for an hour
This step is to prevent the pork from thermal expansion or contraction and therefore deforming while cooking
After freezing for an hour, take the meat out and cut them into small cubes
Theoretically, the bigger you cut them
It will take longer to braise
On the contrary, the smaller you cut them, the shorter it takes to braise them
Then put the pork cubes into the cooker
Prepare a small piece of ginger and smash it for later use
Chop a couple spring onions into short chunks for later use
Add some water into the cooker
The amount of water depends on the power of the rice cooker
And the time it takes for the water to evaporate
Add a little ginger scallion oil
If you do not have ginger scallion oil, you may skip it
Add a small piece of white rock sugar
Add 60g of red wine
If you don’t have red wine, you can also use huangjiu rice wine or Chinese cooking wine
Add 10g of caramelized sugar
At the end, add a couple pieces of cinnamon
Then cover it and cook it for 120 minutes
After cooking for 60 minutes, remove the ginger, spring onions and other ingredients
Then add some salt for saltiness
After adjusting the flavor, continue to cook until finish
While cooking, we need to open the cooker and check if majority of the water are evaporated every now and then
After 2 hours, when the water is mostly evaporated and the sauce is very thick, we can take the meat out
The reason that the sauce becomes thick
Not only because of the collagen in the meat
But also because of the white rock sugar
Then prepare a small preheated stone pot
Add some blanched broccoli at the bottom
By using a preheated stone pot, we can keep the dish warm for longer
If you do not have a stone pot you can also use a clay pot
After putting the vegetables at the bottom, add the red braised pork on top of them
At the end, pour the sauce over the dish then we present it
A fat but not greasy rice cooker red braised pork is finished
Now here are the technical summary
First is how we choose the pork belly cut
The part of pork belly with nipples is leaner
But the meat is loose and easy to split into layers
And the back part of pork belly is very bouncy
But it has the fattest meat so may feel too greasy
The middle part of pork belly is balanced with fat and lean meat
And it is not that easy to split into layers
So, the cut that fits red braised pork is
The middle part that is well balanced between fat and lean meat
Secondly
Although rice cooker can not generate a lot of heat
But it is easy to fully cook the pork
And the texture is better than the ones cooked by pressure cooker
Cooking it for a long time at home, it’s easy to forget the meat is still cooking
And the rice cooker can automatically stop cooking so it is safer this way
Third
Before frying the meat, we can rub some salt on the surface
This way we can prevent the oil to splash while frying
Even when the meat is very fatty, it is not easy to splash while frying
Now let’s make an experiment without rubbing salt on it
We can obviously feel that
The oil in the pork is already burst
This step is very dangerous
Please don’t do this
After frying the skin, even if we braise the pork for a long time, the cube will stay in shape
Fourth
You can also braise the unfrozen meat
But the pork will deform due to thermal expansion and contraction
The best solution to this problem is
To use a heavy object to press in the freezer for an hour
After this, the red braised pork will stay in shape as a neat cube
It won’t affect the texture
Here is the comparison for you
Fifth
Adding red wine here is to dissolve the grease
The more wine you add, the less greasy the pork will taste like
At the end when you eat it, you can eat it with pickled radish and red wine
This is good for reducing the greasiness too
This is the end of technical summary of red braised pork