Huí Guō Ròu (回锅肉)
Cuisine: Sichuan | Shared by: Shanti Christensen

Twice-cooked pork is pork belly, first boiled then fried with a fragrant chorus of peppers and chili bean paste. I learned a simpler version of this twice-cooked pork recipe from Liu Ayi in Suijiang, China. She used green chili peppers that were about four inches long, thin like fingers, curled with wrinkly skin, and severely spicy. The red peppers were friendly and sweet. I found some beautiful peppers from Happy Quail Farms.

Just as there is more than one perspective to every story, treat your cooking the same way. You end up changing the recipe to suit your tastes. My twice-cooked pork is a version of what I've learned from Liu Ayi's easy recipe for twice-cooked pork and what I've typically experienced in restaurants. I loved how Liu Ayi used a beautiful combo of green and red, spicy and sweet peppers. But her recipe doesn't use fermented black beans, which I think are essential to the dish. 

What you’ll need: A cast-iron wok and a fiery desire for spice!

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Ingredients

• 500 grams (1 pound) pork belly, skin layer on
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 tablespoon chili bean paste
• 2 teaspoons fermented black beans
• 4-5 sweet red peppers, sliced diagonally and resembling horse ears
• 1-2 hot green chili peppers, sliced to match the red peppers
• 1 1-inch piece fresh ginger, sliced
• 3 young leeks or green onion, green and white part, cut into 1" diagonal pieces
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• salt

If yellow rice wine isn't available, use dry sherry. Don't use Japanese rice wine as it is a completely different beast— it's sweeter than Chinese rice wines.

Method

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add the slab of pork belly and return to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the pork from the water and allow to cool in the freezer for an hour. This will firm up the meat and make it easy to slice thinly without the skin and fat separating from the lean.
2. Turn the slab of pork skin side down on the cutting board. Use a sharp non-serrated knife and slice the cold pork belly thinly, as thin as a slice of bacon.
3. Heat a seasoned wok and add peanut oil. Over the highest flame or heat, add the pork belly slices to the wok and stir-fry until the edges are slightly crisped and the the fat has melted a bit. Move the pork to the side of the wok.
4. In the clear space of the wok, add the chili bean paste and black beans and stir fry it for 15 seconds until it is a bubbly fragrant sauce. Add the green and red peppers, ginger, and toss with the pork for a couple minutes. Add the leeks and stir-fry for another minute. Add the Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, sugar, and maybe a dash of salt (to taste) and stir-fry for one more minute.

Remove from heat and serve with steamed rice. I know I recommend steamed rice a lot, but so many things are good with steamed rice. Steamed quinoa is a healthy substitute.