Umami pork

Throw together a sweet and spicy marinade for this pork dish, and use your pressure cooker to cut down on cooking time. Served over rice or buttered noodles, this savory dinner comes together quickly.

|
Tastes Like Home
A quick marinade and the pressure cooker produce a savory dinner in no time.

This pork dish is something I threw together a couple of weeks ago. I had gone to the market on a Friday after my class and the butcher brought out some fresh pork. There was a pre-cut 2-pound slab of pork flap/pork belly sitting there saying, "take me home with you." What? You didn't know meat could talk?!

There are no exacting measurements for this dish, it is all based on individual taste. Add the marinade ingredients to a bowl, whisk together and taste, adjusting to suit your taste. Don't worry if you have more marinade than you need. Save the excess in a bottle in the refrigerator for baked chicken or pork.

I cooked the meat in a pressure cooker so by the time I was finishing dilly-dallying around the house this was done. If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can make this on the stovetop in a heavy-bottomed pan or pot with a tight lid.

2 pounds pork flap/pork belly or pork shoulder/butt

Regular soy sauce 

Oyster sauce 

Kecap Manis - Indonesian sweet soy sauce (the ABC brand I think is the best)

Chinkiang vinegar (Chinese black vinegar. Substitute with balsamic or malt vinegar or dry sherry)

Hot pepper sauce

Salt (taste the marinade before adding salt as it my not be necessary for additional salt)

2 tablespoons oil

3/4 cup hot water

1. Cut the meat into 1 to 1-1/2-inch cubes.

2. Mix together the rest of the ingredients to make a marinade. You want a little more than 1/2 cup of marinade.

3. Pour the marinade over the pork and let it marinate for about 20-30 minutes at room temperature.

4. Add the oil to your pressure pot and place on medium heat until very hot.

5. Add the meat and juices to the pot and spread in an even layer. Let it brown for about 2-3 minutes, do not turn it before. At the end of the 2-3 minutes, give it a good turn/toss and cook for another 2 minutes.

6. Pour in the hot water and using your spoon, scrape the bottom of the pan to remove any stuck bits. Cover the cooker and let it come up to pressure. When it comes up to pressure at the first whistle, reduce the heat to low and cook for 22-25 minutes.

7. Remove the cooker from the heat and release the pressure. If there is any liquid other than the oil in the pot, return the pot to the heat and let cook until the liquid has dried out.

8. Remove the meat from the pot, garnish with sliced green onions and serve with rice, mashed ground provision, buttered noodles, or make sandwiches or wraps.

Notes

  • Reserve the oil from the cooked meat to roast potatoes. So good!
  • If using a regular pot or pan, you will need 1+ 1/2 cups of hot water. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce to low and let cook for 40-45 minutes until meat is tender. Remove lid, raise heat to high and let cook until all the liquid has dried out.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Umami pork
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2014/0403/Umami-pork
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe