Food Thursday - 'Beer Braised Pork Belly'

Available for over a year

Beer Braised Pork Belly Ingredients:- 2 lbs pork belly 1 onion (sliced) 4 x4 cm ginger (sliced) 2 cloves garlic 1 cup beer 3 cups beef broth 3 tablespoons soy sauce 2 tablespoons rice vinegar 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce 1 tablespoon Chinese rice cooking wine 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder 2-3 small Chinese yellow rock sugar (or 3 teaspoons of regular sugar) Toppings (Optional):- spring onions (finely chopped) toasted sesame seeds Instructions:- Slice the ginger and onions and roughly smash the garlic Cut the pork belly into 2cm x 3cm chunks. (Don't cut them up too thin else they will melt away into nothing!) In a skillet or heavy-bottomed pot, set the heat to medium and add in the pork belly to start browning it. (Be careful at this point. Pork belly splatters a lot. Use a lid as a shield to deflect some of that hot oil away from you, if you have to!) When you have browned the pork belly halfway through, add in the onions, garlic and ginger to brown them as well. Once all the pork belly has been browned, add in the five spice, beer, rice vinegar, broth, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, shaoxing cooking wine, sugar. Set the stove to high and bring everything to a vigorous boil and boil it for 15 minutes Once everything has boiled for 15 minutes, set the stove to medium-low to low heat and put a lid on the pot. You want the braising liquid to be doing a low rolling boil. Check on the pot at the 45-minute mark to make sure the sauce hasn't reduced to less than half the amount of liquid and that it isn't burning. If the sauce is a syrupy consistency, then it's done. If the sauce hasn't reduced to a syrupy consistency, cook it for another 35 minutes but check on it every 10 minutes. (For a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes) If it still hasn't reached that syrupy consistency, continue to cook it for 5-10 more minutes until the sauce has thickened. Serve with white rice, plain noodles, fries or roasted potatoes mashed potatoes.