🍜 Extras: Kong bak bao 扣肉包
levelling up your braised pork belly
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Extras all about cooking kong bak bao (this is a paid subscriber only-edition of the newsletter). Thank you for being here.
Last weekend, I had some foodie friends over for lunch to celebrate Lunar New Year and the star of the meal was the kong bak bao. If you live outside of Singapore, you might be familiar with Momofuku’s pork buns; kong bak bao is similar in that it consists of tender pork belly in fluffy lotus buns, but it’s a very traditional Hokkien dish that’s been around for far longer.
It is one of my favourite dishes to cook for company because it is such a crowd-pleaser, and also is of sentimental value to me because it was the only dish that I cooked for my late grandfather, and he loved it so much that I cooked it on two separate occasions. I hope you’ll give this dish a go, despite the long cooking time and elbow grease, because it is a dish that truly honours those you love.
Enjoy,
Pamelia
LEVELLING UP YOUR BRAISED PORK-BELLY
The easiest way to prepare kong bak bao is to combine all the ingredients in a pot and to simmer until the pork is tender; this is how it’s done in many homes for ease. However, the traditional way of preparing kong bak bao is to boil, deep-fry, then steam the pork belly until it is unctuous and heartbreakingly tender. This might be the reason why kong bak bao is not widely available (though Westlake Restaurant in Singapore still makes theirs the time-honoured way).
Here’s a breakdown of the steps.
1/ Boiling
Simmer the pork belly in water until it is cooked through; you should be able to pierce it with a chopstick. This allows for the pork belly to be sliced into neat, even slices later on. Through the simmering, the skin also becomes tender enough so that you are able to poke holes in it; this helps to render the fat and create a blistered texture when the pork is fried in the next stage. The water in which the pork is simmered is discarded, taking with it any impurities and off-odours.
2/ Deep-frying
Place the pork belly rind side down in the pot and add enough oil to cover the rind — it should not touch the meat at all. Cover the pot and heat up the oil. The blistering of the pork rind will start sounding explosive as the oil pelts the lid. It’s a good idea to use a pot with a transparent lid so you can see what’s going on. Hold onto the lid (if you’re worried about it popping off) and wait for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the aggressive popping subsides and all you hear are noises of sizzling oil. The rind should be crisp and beautifully golden by this point.
Upon soaking in water, the skin softens and adopts a wrinkled appearance known to the Chinese as “tiger skin” 虎皮. Though you can skip this step, it creates a spectacular mouthfeel — if you’re a fan of the puffy sauce-soaked skin of chicken feet (“phoenix claws”) at dim sum restaurants, you know what I mean.
3/ Steaming
The pork is sliced to the size of the lotus buns, mixed with a garlicky, five spice-fragrant sauce, and steamed until fork tender, about 3 hours. At this point, the pork can be cooled and kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days — perfect for entertaining.
4/ Thickening the sauce
On the day of serving, I pour the accumulated pork juices from the pan into a pot and thicken it with cornstarch. This gets drizzled all over the pork and right before my guests arrive, I steam the pork to heat it through.
How does pork belly prepared this way compare to braised pork belly that has been simmered in a pot? The difference, at least to me, is massive. While regular braised pork has rind that is smooth and tender, the rind of pork belly prepared this way is textured, spongy, and gelatinous like sea cucumber. And because steaming is a gentler cooking method than simmering, you don’t run the risk of the meat becoming dry or tough, as braised meat can be when you are inattentive to how vigorously the liquid in the pot is simmering. In short, meat so tender that it yields to the tines of a fork with barely any effort, and a pleasantly chewy rind that sponges up all of that luscious gravy.
KONG BAK BAO 扣肉包
Serves 4 to 6
