Cooking a huge pot of stewed pork belly was really worth it. Eldest son super loved the dish, of course he only ate the meat and not the fat because he has not fallen in love with fat pork yet.
Basic ingredients: whole garlic, star anise, cinnamon stick and later on I added bay leaves too.
Look at those scum. So, always preboiled the meat.
Super huge amount of pork belly, and a little bit of pork fillet slices.
I love those layers as long as they were not mine.
Heated up butter to stir fry the ingredients till aromatic.
After that, added in the meat.
Extra ingredients such as potato and carrot and beancurd skin.
Of course, extra good protein such as hard-boiled eggs.
Husband continued cooking from where I left at the ingredients preps. He added some kungfu aka sauces and water, and voila, a scrumptious one-pot stewed pork belly! Yums!
It is still a challenging day today.
Youngest son is still having his bowel obstruction pain and on hourly tube-feeding. Husband and I are still trying our best in teamwork, taking care of the household affair, our respective work and responsibilities, eldest son and of course the youngest son. We were not in the mood of eating out, so husband decided to cook a big batch of one-pot dish. The cool thing about this was, we did it together, yet separately on our different roles to ensure the big pot of dish came out beautifully.
Stewed Pork Belly One-Pot Dish!
We still have 8 stripes of pork belly in our deep freezer, which we bought in the beginning of the year at a discounted price. Husband said, "Let's cook them all!!!"
It was a lot, to be honest. However, with the huge amount, it can last us for two days, which is good.
We cooked Chinese style of stewed pork belly except that we did not use vegetable oil but butter instead. Husband is in carnivore diet, and he tries not to take vegetables. And we also opted out caramel soy sauce and sugar, we just used usual light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and some oyster sauce which unavoidably, there would be some sugar in there too. What to do! Chinese style stewed meat usually calls for all these basic sauce ingredients.
My role
I woke up earlier to finish off some task, and in between hourly tube-feeding, I did the following.
I wash thoroughly all the 8 stripes of pork belly, trying my best to pluck out those remainder bristles on the pig's skin, one of the thing I couldn't stand when I eat pork belly, unless those roasted crispy pork belly whereby all the hair had disappeared due to high heat. But for stewing... nah, I wanted NO leftover bristles. That took me quite awhile.
I then rubbed salt on all the meat to rub off any residue or dirt or anything unseen. I don't know how to explain, but I love to think the salt will kill the microbes, if there are present. I felt the meat and the pork's skin were cleaner being rubbed with salt and rinsed off thoroughly.
P/S: I did not get to take picture while I was on step 1 and step 2 because I was also in and out kitchen to ensure my youngest son was alright, that he didn't gag or vomit out his feeds.
It was advisable to pre-boiled the meat to remove any scum. This would result in a cleaner broth or soup.
After preboiled, rinsed off and washed the meat thoroughly for a clean look. Then I cut the stripes of pork belly into bite sizes.
I also prepared other ingredients which my eldest son loved. For example, dried bean curd skin (soaked to soften), one potato and one carrot.
In a pot, heat up one tablespoon of butter, and fried the basic ingredients of garlic (whole), 3 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, and bay leaves till fragrant. Then, meats were added in, tossed them around to mix. And I left it there for my husband to continue later for the further cooking.
We also wanted to add hardboiled eggs so I prepared six of them.
Husband role
We could only continue cooking because we ran out of dark soy sauce and ginger. That was the reason I stopped at step 6.
While on the way to pick the eldest son from school, husband went to grab dark soy sauce and old ginger.
Continue to step 8.
He then added about 2 cups of light soy sauce, 1.5 cup of dark soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of oyster, a 2-cm thick ginger to the pot containing the meat and herbs, and continue to mix them all up. He also added in the potatoes and carrots and hardboiled eggs.
Water was added to cover the meat, the whole pot was then brought to boil at high heat for 10 minutes, then lower down fire for simmering for another 30 minutes.
Lastly, he added in the beancurd skin to let boil for another 5 minutes, seasoned with some salt if necessary. And the dish was ready!
When I came back from my tutoring job, it was already almost 7pm. I quickly boiled rice and we three ate the one-pot dish with our plates of rice. Super satisfaction because it was so tasty and delicious. I was thankful today for Jansen's overall progress, at least lesser pain than yesterday and able to tolerate more milk feed. He said, he could not wait to be well to eat the stewed pork belly, stewed chicken feet and cotton candy.