In the beef, mushrooms and pepper stir fry recipe, I mentioned Stephan Yan’s old show called Wok With Yan where I learned to pound and thinly slice meat so that there are more pieces to go around on the dining table. I also mentioned that the technique is good for just about any meat for stir frying. It works with seafood too.
Aside from frugality considerations, thinly slicing pounded meat has a second advantage. The meat, cut across the grain, cooks faster. It’s true for beef; it’s true for pork.
I have also mentioned that to skip the pounding and slicing part, I often buy pre-cut meat for my stir fries. For beef, I get sukiyaki cut or yakiniku cut. For pork, bacon-cut pork belly is always my first choice. Machine-sliced pork belly cut like bacon rashers. In Korean meatshops, the cut is called pork steak bulgogi or pork samgyeopsal. That’s the cut I used for this dish, and that’s why the cooking time is so short.
The dish consists of three components: the vegetables, the meat and the sauce. I have learned a while back that to prevent vegetables from soaking up the color of brown sauces and losing their natural bright colors during stir frying, it is best to cook them separately. That way, when they are tossed with the meat and sauce, the contact with the dark-colored ingredients is too short for them to soak up the hue.
In this dish, the broccoli florets were parboiled in lightly salted boiling water with a dash of sesame seed oil. A minute was enough to cook them through minus any chance that they would turn soggy. The broccoli florets were drained, given an ice bath, drained and set aside.
The pan was wiped clean and the pork slices were spread to cover the bottom. With the heat on MEDIUM, the pork slices were left to render fat then allowed to fry in the rendered fat until undersides were browned.
The pork slices were stirred and cooked on HIGH for another minute before the sauce — a mixture of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, Shao Xing rice wine and sesame seed oil — was poured in. An equal amount of water went into the pan too. Chopped garlic was added before the pan was covered to cook to tenderness.
By the time the liquid had reduced to almost nothing, chunks of onion were stirred in. Half a minute later, the parboiled broccoli florets joined the pork and the stir frying continued just until the broccoli florets were heated through.
Ingredients
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 onion (white or yellow)
- 1 ½ cups broccoli florets
- 2 pinches salt
- 1 teaspoon sesame seed oil divided
- 200 grams thinly sliced pork belly (bacon-cut pork, pork steak bulgogi or pork samgyeopsal in Asian meatshops)
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon Shao Xing rice wine (or substitute sake or mirin)
- 2 bird's eye chilies (optional)
Instructions
- Peel the garlic and chop.
- Peel the onion and cut into chunks.
- Boil about four cups of water in a pan, add the salt and half a teaspoon of sesame oil. Drop in the broccoli florets. When the water comes to a boil once more, count one minute then scoop out the broccoli.
- Drain the broccoli florets and dump into a bowl of iced water. When cool, drain once more and set aside.
- Cut the pork slices into two-inch wide pieces and spread on a cold frying pan.
- With the heat set on MEDIUM, leave the pork to cook and render fat until the undersides are lightly browned. Turn up the heat to HIGH, stir to separate any pieces that stick together and cook, tossing and stirring, for a minute.
- Stir together the soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, Shao Xing rice wine and remaining sesame seed oil. Pour over the pork. Stir to coat every piece of meat with sauce.
- Pour in a quarter cup of water and stir in the garlic.
- With the heat set to LOW, cover the pan and let the pork cook until almost all of the liquid has dried up (it takes less than five minutes).
- If adding chilies, slit them open, scrape off the seeds and discard. Thinly slice the chilies.
- Turn up the heat to HIGH. Add the onion and cook, tossing, until the onion pieces start to turn translucent.
- Add the broccoli florets and stir fry for another minute until everything is hot.
- Transfer the dish to a serving plate and, optionally, top with sliced chilies.
