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Recipes
Chinese Twice-Cooked Pork Recipe
The Sichuan province in southwest China is known for its spicy recipes; one of the most popular dishes that embraces this mouth-watering flavour profile is twice-cooked pork. To ensure you can get an authentic taste of this classic dish at home, we’ve enlisted the help of @windsor__foodie on Instagram, who has kindly shared their brilliant take on the recipe with us. To make this dish or any of your other favourites, you can find everything you need on our online Chinese supermarket in the UK, which also caters to a range of southeast Asian cuisines.
What is Twice-Cooked Pork?
The key to this dish is right there in the name – you must cook the pork twice. First, the pork belly is simmered in water, and then it is fried in a wok, giving it a wonderful texture. In Chinese, the dish is called Hui Guo Rou, which translates to ‘the meat that returned to the wok’, referring to this vital step in the cooking process. As with any popular dish, there will be some variation in the ingredients as people alter it to suit their taste. However, you’ll find a couple of central ingredients that are essential to ensuring the dish has that recognisable taste and texture. This includes pork belly, spicy bean paste, fermented black beans and green garlic or leeks.
Ingredients for Twice-Cooked Pork
- 500g strips of pork belly,
- 2 inches ginger, sliced, skin left on
- 2 spring onions, sliced into halves
- 1/2 tsp Sichuan peppercorns
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil for frying
- 1 tbsp hot broadbean paste
- 1/2 tbsp fermented black beans (aka salted black beans)
- 6-8 pieces dried red chillies
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 green bell peppers cut into bite-sized pieces, seeds removed
- 1 leek, sliced diagonally into chunks
- 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
- 1.5 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp msg (optional)
- A pinch of salt
- Steamed Jasmine rice to serve
How to Make Twice-Cooked Pork
- Add boiling water to a large saucepan until filled halfway up. Add the pork belly strips. Boil the pork with the sliced ginger, spring onion and Sichuan peppercorns. Simmer for 30 minutes until tender with a lid on. Allow the pork to cool completely, then slice very thinly using a sharp knife.
- Heat a wok over a high heat and add the vegetable oil. Stir fry the pork until browned and the fat is starting to caramelise. Remove from wok and set aside.
- Stir fry the broad bean paste for 20 seconds in the rendered pork fat. Be careful not to burn it.
- Add in the sliced garlic. Fry for 20 seconds until fragrant. Re-add pork slices and scatter over the msg and a pinch of salt. Fry for 2 minutes.
- Add in the green pepper, fermented black beans and the leek, toss everything together, then add the Shaoxing wine, light soy, sugar, plus the dried chillies.
- Once the peppers/leeks are tender, it's ready. Serve over steamed jasmine rice.
You don’t need to be a genius in the kitchen to pull this one off yourself! In fact, it’s a relatively simple recipe for the outstanding results you’ll get. If you enjoyed this recipe and want to flex your cooking skills again, our recipe for spicy Sichuan noodles is the one to try next.
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