Marinaded Pork Belly

You don’t have to live in Japan to notice what is the most popular meat sold in Japan. While everyone loves beef, in Japan, beef is very expensive as compared to other meat. I can’t even remember the last time my family and I had beef! (it was two months ago!). However, pork, on the other hand, is plentiful and so much more practical for daily cooking. I am very happy to be sharing with you one of my favorite recipes today.

Japanese chashu can be found in many Japanese dishes in both restaurants and home cooking. Rice bowls, ramen, fried rice, just to name a few, are some of the most common ones I’ve seen. The process of making chashu can be very time consuming because of the prepping that needs to be done before you cook the meat, as well as, what needs to be done after it’s cooked and before it can be eaten.

This is the simplified version of the Japanese marinaded pork belly which can be eaten the day and taste just as good. It is sweet in taste and soft in texture. My favorite to use this pork is cutting them into tiny cubes to use in fried rice!. One other very popular way is adding a few slices into a ramen bowl!.

Personally, I prefer to use pork belly because the fat makes it very juicy, but you can opt for a pork loin if you prefer a less fat.

Marinaded Pork Belly (Chashu)

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Tenderize the pork belly with either a tenderizer or, with a fork, by evening stabbing into the meat a few times. Then set the meat aside.
2. Add the salt, sugar, garlic, black pepper, into one bowl. Mix the ingredient well and roll the pork onto the mixture. Make sure to cover evenly.
3. *If you prefer to cook the pork via oven, wrap the pork in aluminum and bake at 160 Celcius for 1 hour.
   *If you prefer to cook on a stove with a frypan, cook under a low-medium heat setting until almost fully cooked.
4. Once the pork is done, discard the fat and set the pork aside to cool-down.
5. With a frypan, add in the wet ingredients (soy sauce, Worchester, sake, water, sesame oil). Mix everything well under medium-heat.
6. Once the mixture starts to bubble, lay the pork into the pan and flip the pork to each side. Make sure that all sides are covered with the sauce.
7. Cover the pan with a lid and let the pork sit and cook thoroughly in the mixture under medium heat. This takes about 10 minutes (more or less, depending on how thick the pork cuts are) until fully cooked. Turn off the heat.
8. Optional: Before transferring the pork onto a dish, slice the pork into thin slices.
9.  Transfer the pork onto a dish. Drizzle some of the remaining sauce from the pan in top of the pork and add the Japanese nigi onto the plate. Arrange the Japanese nigi as you prefer.

Tip: Let the pork marinate in the sauce overnight before eating. This makes the meat super flaky and soft!.

ENJOY!…with a bowl of warm white rice.