I haven’t tried this dish in a restaurant so I don’t have a great standard to compare my dish to. What I can tell you is…mine looks super dark and maybe I made it wrong a little bit…but it still tasted good! How can you go wrong with pork belly?

Pan fry the pork belly until there is no visible pink. The original recipe calls for pork belly with the skin on…mine didn’t have the skin, still works fine. Look at all that pork belly fat…

Dark soy sauce, regular soy sauce, five spice powder, water, sugar and chinese cooking wine…simmer away my love…

The recipe calls for a cup of fried shallots which you can find in the Asian grocery (I know Don Quijote has it). I didn’t have it so I just sliced up a half red onion (that’s all I had) and coated it in cornstarch and pan fried them until it got crispy. I simmered the pork for 30 minutes and then added the fried onions.

So I’m thinking I know where I went “wrong,” I simmered this dish for 1.5 hours uncovered. I’m thinking it should have been covered cause mine got reduced too much. It was a lot of liquid and if I kept the lid on, then it would have been choke liquid! I think if I make this dish again, I would simmer it for one hour covered and then uncovered for the last 30 minutes.

I love adding eggs to braised dishes but I can’t stand overcooked eggs with gray rings. So for this, I hardboiled these eggs for only 4 minutes so the whites could set…peeled them and added these eggs 30 minutes before the dish was complete. Was perfect! The yolk was just set at this point…

No gray ring!

Lu Rou Fan (Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice Bowl)

Ingredients:
2 lb of Pork Belly
1 cup of Fried Shallots OR Half a red onion sliced, coated in cornstarch and pan fried until crispy
¼ cup of Soy Sauce
¼ cup of Dark Soy Sauce
1.5 T of Five Spice Powder (Original recipe calls for 1.5 T, I will use only 1 T next time)
2.5 T of Sugar
½ cup of Chinese Cooking Wine (Shao Xing Cooking Wine)
3 cups of Water (I used 2.5 C but will use 3 C next time)
8 eggs, soft boiled

Directions:
Place eggs into pot of water and bring to a boil. Once it is boiling, turn stove off and leave eggs covered on the heat for 4 minutes. Drain immediately and place eggs in an ice bath to stop cooking process. Once cooled, peel the eggs. I don’t like the eggs to overcook (no to gray rings!) so I undercook it here since it will continue to cook in the pork mixture afterwards. This method left me with eggs with just set egg yolks.

Slice pork belly into bite sized pieces. Place pork belly into a skillet pan and saute until no longer pink.

Add in soy sauce, dark soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, five-spice powder, sugar, and mix. 

Pour in 3 cups of water and bring to a boil.

Lower heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Add fried shallots (or fried onion slices) and mix. Simmer uncovered for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add peeled eggs to pan to coat in sauce, simmer uncovered for final 30 minutes (1.5 hr total simmering time) – stir occasionally.

The sauce of and pork will reduce down considerably to a dark treacle molasses like sauce (mine did). Serve over some fresh hot white rice with sprigs of cilantro and slices of cucumber. 

Inspired by:
https://tiffycooks.com/authentic-taiwanese-braised-pork-rice-instant-pot-easy/
https://thewoksoflife.com/lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-braised-pork-rice-bowl/