lu rou fan
Somehow the few times I’ve made lu rou fan, its rained. The sky knows this warm bowl of steaming hot rice and braised meat just needs the rain to make it better. Previously I’ve always made it in a slow cooker, slowly steeping all that wonderful flavours into the meat but today I felt like simmering it on the stove instead. Both ways work equally well. This is a minimal-washing-throw-everything-in-one-pot kinda dish so perfect for those rainy lazy days.
Recipe
Ingredients
300g of minced pork or cut pork belly
4 shallots, sliced
half a head of garlic, minced
2 cm of ginger, sliced
3 shiitake mushrooms, soaked and sliced thinly
5 tbsp of light soy sauce
2 tbsp of oyster sauce
1 tbsp of sesame oil
10 tbsp of dark soy sauce
1/4 cup of shaoxing wine
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
1/2 tsp of five spice powder
2 tbsp of sugar
Method
Heat up some oil in your pot over the stove on medium heat. Once hot, fry the garlic and shallots until its golden brown and crispy. Once crispy, lower the heat and add in your pork and dark soy sauce. Depending on the kind of dark soy sauce you use, you might want to add on more later on. Stir fry until well combined for about 2-3 min then add the rest of the ingredients. Stir well until well combined then add water until the meat is fully covered. Leave it to simmer on a stove for about 4-5 hours. If you want some braised eggs, you can add in hard boiled eggs about 2 hours before its done. Taste it halfway and if you feel it needs more saltiness, you can add more dark soy sauce. I used a Malaysian caramelised dark soy sauce which is rather thick and I mainly eyeballed it but the Singapore version is much more watery so you might end up adding about 1/4 cup of dark soy sauce. Again, taste preference is subjective so feel free to adjust accordingly!
After simmering, you can spoon the meat over steamed rice and serve with some blanched green vegetables or pickled vegetables.
