Cook’s notes
I’ve cooked this dish many times before using the traditional method. Caramelize sugar in a wok, add pork cubes, cook until the sticky syrup coats the meat, add coconut juice and hard-boiled eggs and braise until the pork is tender.
But I always found the first stage of cooking — tossing the meat in sticky caramelized sugar — problematic. The sugar often seizes when the pork is added because the temperature drops immediately. So, I tried another way of cooking this lovely dish. And I find that this modified cooking procedure is easier, less messy and less prone to disaster.
Tip #1: Use white sugar, not brown. The lovely caramel color of the dish is acquired by properly caramelizing the sugar until amber colored.
#Tip #2: Use the juice from a young coconut. The juice from mature coconut will ruin the dish.
Vietnamese caramelized pork and eggs
Ingredients
- fish sauce
- 1 kilogram pork belly (2.2 pounds) uncut
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 shallots peeled and chopped
- 4 cloves garlic peeled and chopped
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 1¾ cups coconut juice
- 6 eggs hard-boiled and shelled
Instructions
- In a large shallow pan, boil two cups of water with a tablespoon of fish sauce. Drop in the pork, bring to the boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Scoop out the pork and cut into 1½-inch cubes.
- In a wok, heat the cooking oil.
- Saute the shallots and garlic for about a minute then stir in the pork cubes.
- Drizzle in two to three tablespoons fish sauce and leave to allow the pork to soak up the liquid and render some fat.
- While the pork cooks in fish sauce, melt the sugar with a quarter cup of coconut juice until syrupy and amber colored.
- Pour the caramelized sugar over the pork and toss until every pork cube is coated with the syrup.
- Pour in the remaining cup and a half of coconut juice and add the hard-boiled eggs.
- Cover the wok and braise the pork and eggs for about 30 minutes or until the pork is cooked through and the sauce has reduced to less than half.
- Taste, add more fish sauce if needed, before serving with rice.
Soy ginger beef rice bowl
