Reading Chinese Menus: Dishes: 紅燒肉 — hóng shāo ròu — red-cooked pork

[kake]

Red-cooking (紅燒/hóng shāo) is a style of Chinese cooking often used for pork (肉/ròu). The red colour comes from a combination of caramelised sugar and soy sauce, and additional flavour is imparted by Shàoxīng wine and star anise. Optional extra ingredients include garlic, fresh ginger, and cassia or cinnamon bark. One of the most common cuts used is pork belly, cut into chunks but with the skin and fat retained to melt into a delicious tenderness as the meat braises.

I've seen 紅燒肉 on lots of Chinese menus here in London; the photo above is of a version I ate at Dragon Inn on the Old Kent Road. It's not hard to make at home, though. I have a couple of recipes to suggest, each with its own characteristics, and the background information at both links is also well worth reading. The first is an adaptation of a recipe by Fuchsia Dunlop, and the second is a recipe from the Red Cook blog (written by a Singapore-born blogger who likes red-cooked pork so much he named his blog after it). (Edit, June 2011: Kian at Red Cook has now posted a follow-up to his previous post which is also worth reading.)

I should add that I prefer to cook the pork for a lot longer than suggested in both these recipes — I find two-and-a-half to three hours is optimal, to get it really tender. Be careful when stirring it after the first couple of hours, as it has a tendency to fall apart by this point. Another important point is that it's well worth taking the time to blanch the meat before you start, to get out the impurities and make sure your sauce is nice and clear. Put your slab of pork belly in a pan with enough cold water to cover, then bring it up to the boil and let it simmer for a minute or two until the foam/scum has risen on top. Now drain the meat (discard the blanching water) and give it a wash under the tap to remove any remnants of scum. I find this is an easier and less wasteful alternative to skimming the scum off the sauce/stock while the dish is cooking, and I do it as a first step whenever I'm making a stock or sauce from meat or bones.

If you'd like to see 紅燒肉 being made, check out this YouTube demonstration, taken from a Chinese TV channel (all in Chinese, no English translation, but the visuals are easy enough to follow).

An interesting aside on all this is a blog post by Fuchsia Dunlop herself poking gentle fun at attempts to standardise the recipe for 紅燒肉. Also, for anyone wishing to delve further into the intricacies of red-cooking, this eGullet thread on the many meanings of 紅燒 might be of interest.

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See here for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[emperor]

I'm enjoying these posts, thanks. I have a Ken Hom book somewhere, and occasionally am tempted to try things from it, but 紅燒肉 looks reasonably straightforward and tasty.

It would be nice if you kept a single post with all the characters on it that you've talked about, maybe?

[pitseleh]

yeah, that would be suuuuper helpful, the catch-all post.

[kake]

Same question to you as to emperor — how would you see yourself using such a post?

[pitseleh]

Oh, yes, definitely! It really helps to have a little reference glossary sort of thing when learning (about) a new language, I've learned.

[kake]

I think you've answered "would you use..." whereas what I'm asking is "how would you use..." :) See my comment to emperor, below.

[pitseleh]

To fact check for later? And to make sure I didn't miss any characters. Paragraph posts are good, but have the disadvantages of paragraphs, in that since they're prose, they're not straight-forward and matter-of-fact. When I go back, if I'm looking for specific information, it would be easier to not have to hunt through chunks of information for the one tidbit I need; instead, a glossary would have lots of easy-to-find tidbits ready for me.

Journal search doesn't work for chinese characters, but f3 usually does.

[kake]

Thanks for the clarification — I'll keep it in mind. Hopefully the stuff I'm going to post about tomorrow will be helpful to you!

[kake]

I'm enjoying these posts, thanks. I have a Ken Hom book somewhere, and occasionally am tempted to try things from it, but 紅燒肉 looks reasonably straightforward and tasty.

Glad you're enjoying them! Yes, it is both straightforward and tasty — do give it a go.

It would be nice if you kept a single post with all the characters on it that you've talked about, maybe?

I could perhaps do something along those lines... how were you thinking it should work, i.e. what sort of use would you put it to? On Monday I'll be posting about looking things up in online dictionaries, so perhaps that would suit your needs better. I really do think it's worth making your own vocab list — I found it helped me remember things, and I could organise (and later reorganise) it in a way that made sense to me.

Journal search doesn't seem to work for Chinese characters, which is a shame... I'll go and report that now.

[pulchritude]

I am always shocked that people don't blanch meat in general. I blanch nearly all the meat I use for cooking. :3 I didn't realize that apparently many other people skim scum off while cooking - I feel like it's not that easy to get all the scum that way, and one would have to stand there, waiting...:|

[kake]

The technique is actually fairly new to me. I didn't start learning to cook meat until relatively recently, but skimming has irritated me since my very first attempt at a meat stock. I can't remember where I first heard of the blanching idea — it may well have been during my recent research into Chinese cooking. I don't ever remember seeing people blanch meat on English-language cookery TV, but the cooks in the Chinese-language videos I've been watching on YouTube do it quite frequently.

I have a fairly substantial library of food-related books (mostly written by British or American authors, though some of those authors are of Asian descent and/or write about Asian cuisines), and I just spent some time looking up stock-making techniques. The only books that mention pre-blanching are by Harold McGee and Heston Blumenthal; all the others insist on skimming and/or making sure that the stock never gets more agitated than a very very gentle simmer. This doesn't really surprise me, since those are the two most scientifically-oriented cookery writers represented among my collection, so it makes sense that they would know about the better way.

McGee does mention that oven-roasting bones before using them in stock will have the same protein-coagulating effect as blanching them — I've never tried this though. He also points out that starting the blanching process in cold water rather than hot makes it more effective.

I don't know if I'd bother with blanching before e.g. roasting or grilling, but it definitely makes a difference in the clarity of sauces, stocks, and soups, and like you I'm surprised that it isn't a better-known technique.

Looking good

[(Anonymous)]

I've read through your posts and it's all looking good, and terribly delicious. I recall my mother's red-braised pork. Delicious. :P~~
--Qiuyan

Re: Looking good

[kake]

Thank you!