- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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ScottyD posted:
Someone here posted a recipe for this years ago that looked awesome too, it involved brushing vodka onto the skin and had the most amazing cracklin on the top. Yours looks totally awesome, but if anyone remembers and has the recipe I'm talking about, please post it! Not on goonswithspoons.com as far as I can see!
Here it is! I saved the entire thread to send to a friend's dad to try out.
Original thread (archives needed) - http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3127188
wei posted:
A piece of pork belly (Skin-on, this is important! Try to get something with nice layers of fat and meat.)
An oven with a broil function
Salt
Sugar
Vodka (or other neutral-tasting spirit)
Five spice powder
Garlic
Red fermented beancurd, or you can use the type preserved in chilli if you can’t get the red stuff. Also known as Chinese ‘cheese’. They usually come in glass jars, as pictured above. They’ll be available at your local Chinese grocer. If you can’t get either, it’s okay to omit it.
Blowtorch or shave off any hair left on the skin, if you care about this.
I use a little wooden implement with spikes to make a shitload of puncture holes in the skin. This helps the fat render out of the skin during the roasting process, which results in a nice and even crispy crackling. If you have a tool like that with spikes, do this. This is what it looks like close up:
If not, you can score the skin both lengthwise and crosswise with a sharp knife. Make sure not to cut through the skin into the fat layer. Try to keep the distance between each score about 5-10mm.
This is a crappy picture, but the skin will look a bit like this after being punctured:
Now the next step probably goes against a lot of food safety rules, so skip it if you like. Sit the pork belly on a wire rack in the sink, and pour 1.5 litres of boiling water over the skin. This is risky because the belly has to be exposed in the fridge for 24-48 hours, and the outer edges of the belly will be partly cooked from the scalding.
While it cools, prepare the seasoning.
The following measurements are for a piece of pork belly just under 2 pounds. Combine a 1 tsp piece of fermented beancurd, 1-2 tsp five spice powder, 1.5 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar, and 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced. Mash into a paste. I use table salt, so I'm guessing you need a bit more if you use kosher or something coarser.
If you’re not using the fermented beancurd, use an extra half teaspoon of salt. The absence of the beancurd will most likely result in the garlic burning during the roasting, and it won’t combine readily into a paste. You can omit the garlic, or use garlic powder or something. I’ve never done this without the beancurd, so I’m not sure what to do.
Wipe the belly dry with paper towels after it cools enough to handle. Score the underside of the belly about 10mm deep, like so:
Rub your paste (or dry-rub) all over the belly except the skin. Make sure to get it in the cracks on the scored underside. It’ll look like this:
Paint the skin with vodka. I think I used about 1/2 to 1 tsp. It doesn’t have to be swimming in it, just a sheen of vodka will do. Sprinkle 1/2 a teaspoon of salt on the skin and pop the belly into the fridge for 24-48 hours. Be sure to keep the belly elevated on a small rack or something, so the vodka doesn’t soak the underside of the belly. You’ll need to leave the belly exposed, so I hope your fridge has nothing nasty in it. Once or twice during the refrigeration period, say about 12 hours apart, paint another layer of vodka and sprinkle more salt on the skin.
The salt draws out moisture from the skin. The vodka is supposed to denature the skin or something, which also contributes to the formation of bubbly crackling. I don’t know the science behind it so I’m not going to go into that.
Traditionally, the Chinese use bicarbonate of soda or a lye water solution instead of vodka. I picked up the vodka thing on a different cooking forum, where someone experimented with 6 different solutions. He found that vodka gave the best results. I’ve done it with lye water before, which imparted a soapy flavour to the skin. I’ve also done it without applying anything to the skin, and the skin was still hard and not crispy in some places.
After a day or two the skin will be dry and hard to the touch, and the salt on the skin should have dissolved. The vodka will have evaporated.
Preheat oven to 160-170C. Place the belly on a rack in a roasting tray, then pop it in the middle rack of the oven for an hour. Most people would roast at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time, but I find the slow roasting results in a better crackling (more time to render the fat on the skin). Use a thermometer if you have one, I’d take it to medium or medium-well.
You’ll get something that looks like this after an hour. Pay no heed to the extra skins in the background, they’re rogue skins from a pork shoulder.
Wipe as much liquid fat off the surface of the skin as possible, using a paper towel. This is especially important if you have a pool of fat on the surface, as it will prevent the crackling from forming. Now turn the broiler on, and broil until the skin until it looks like this, about 5 minutes:
If you haven’t done this before and your oven window is clean enough to see through (clean it you filthy goon), watch the belly skin bubble up as you broil it. It should start bubbling up almost instantly, it’s pretty fun to watch them form. If you like bubbles, that is.
Broil until there are bubbles all over the surface, but stop if nothing else forms after about 5 minutes, or you’ll burn it. If you’re an idiot like me and got distracted by the telly during the broiling, scrape and dust off any black bits on the crackling.
Let it rest for about 15-20 minutes, then chop to the size of your liking. I find it easier to slice it from the bottom (skin side down), because the crackling shatters very easily.
While it rests, cook up a quick veggie stir-fry. Serve on plain white rice, with stir-fried veggies of your choice.
Feel free to change the seasonings as you wish. Mine might be a little too salty for some palates. If you google a bit you’ll find that most people have their own recipe. I haven’t tried it myself but you should be able to skip the scalding step. Between the puncturing/scoring, drying out the skin in the fridge and vodka/salt treatment of the skin, the crackling should still be decent.
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Apr 10, 2011 17:32
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May 5, 2024 06:51
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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squigadoo posted:
I don't dare crack open my eggs in case they smell, so I'll be getting a new box this weekend if I can figure out how one person can eat 6 of them in a month.
Loads and loads of porridge.
Apart from that, there's:
Century egg and pickled ginged - an appetizer which is just slices of pickled ginger wrapped around slices of century egg.
3 egg spinach - century egg, salted egg and a normal egg stir fried with spinach (you can use less water then what the recipe states, also it's fine without the salted egg, though not as awesome).
Tofu and century egg - chilled silken tofu topped with century egg and other stuff (ie: fried shallots, fried garlic, chilli, spring onions) in a sauce (ie: soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, oyster sauce)
Steamed egg with century egg - the recipe I linked has pork and salted egg included, but steamed eggs are very awesome and you can either have it plain or have just the century eggs in, or fishcake, or dried shrimp.
(Disclaimer: While I've eaten the above dishes before, the linked stuff are just the first results that showed up on google, though they're more or less the same as my family's.)
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Jan 19, 2012 17:36
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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sounds kinda like chawanmushi
which is to say, it sounds good!
Yeah it's similar. I normally have it plain with sesame oil on top, but other stuff to put in - Century egg, fishcake, fish, canned button mushrooms.
There's also the dessert version, which has milk instead of water and sugar (and ginger if you're a ginger kinda person - either toss in some ginger while boiling the mixture and strain or grate the ginger and use the juice).
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Sep 17, 2013 10:49
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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Can you please tell me why people insist on using after-boiled water to "preserve the smoothest texture"? Nope, it can't be purified, it can't be distilled, it can't be hot (ok temp I can see this one).
Honestly, I have no idea. I'm a lovely chinese person who uses tap water in steamed eggs, because my grandma uses tap water too. Wiki claims it's because when steaming the egg, it's not hot enough to kill off any germs in the egg+water mixture. Mostly I think it's a thing that people did a long time ago because of whatever reasons (maybe the reason wiki gives), and people continue doing today because that's how it's always been done.
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Sep 18, 2013 11:45
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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I don't make congee authentically because I'm not from HK though. But I consider HK food an almost entirely separate realm than mainland Chinese food. Where I'm from, our porridge is always just with water and flavored after the fact with soy sauce etc.
Same here. Chicken stock in porridge just seems so alien to me (but I think I'll try it one of these days).
I love the porridge Cantonese restaurants serve though. It is so amazingly smooth.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:21
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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My favourites are Teochew flaky skin yam mooncakes. So good, but they're best eaten straight after frying, once it's cold it's not so tasty. I just nab fresh samples each time I pass by their booth at the mooncake fair.
This year we had bamboo charcoal skin mooncakes. Tastes the same to me, but it did look nice.
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Sep 20, 2013 06:08
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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Yeah that's nian gow and it's pretty much like your baker described. It looks like it might be the Cantonese type. It's great when dipped in egg and fried.
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Feb 20, 2015 03:57
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May 5, 2024 06:51
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- mania
- Sep 9, 2004
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What do you guys like to do with salted duck eggs?
3 egg spinach and egg drop soup (with both salted egg and normal egg).
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Jun 14, 2015 07:48
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Apr 10, 2011 17:32
