Kakuni Braised Pork Belly Soy-Mirin Technique

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork belly, skin-on, cut into 5 cm squares
• 200 ml sake
• 100 ml mirin
• 80 ml soy sauce, light Japanese soy (koikuchi or usukuchi)
• 30 g sugar
• For blanching
• 1 knob fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• To serve
• 2 stalks negi (Japanese long onion), thinly sliced
• 1 tsp karashi, Japanese hot mustard, prepared

Method

1. 1
   Bring a generous volume of water to a full boil in a wide saucepan. Add the ginger slices and crushed garlic. Lower the pork belly squares into the water and blanch for 10 minutes. Lift the pieces clear, discard the water, and rinse each piece under cold running water. The surfaces should be visibly clean, with no grey scum adhering to the flesh.
2. 2
   Return the pork to the cleaned saucepan. Pour over the sake and enough cold water to barely submerge the pieces. Bring to a gentle simmer — the surface should tremble, not roll — and cook uncovered for 30 minutes. The sake-heavy liquid begins the work of softening collagen before any soy is introduced. Do not add soy sauce at this stage. The liquid will appear pale and lightly clouded; that is correct.
3. 3
   Add the mirin and sugar. Stir briefly to dissolve the sugar, then add the soy sauce. Maintain the same gentle simmer — never a boil — for a further 60 to 90 minutes, turning the pork every 20 minutes so each face absorbs the deepening liquid equally. This is where the dish lives or dies: a boil will tighten the muscle fibres and defeat the hours of patient work; the correct simmer converts collagen to quivering gelatin. The pork is ready when a chopstick pressed against a cube meets no resistance and the fat has turned translucent.
4. 4
   Remove the pan from the heat. Allow the pork to cool in its braising liquid, then transfer — pork and liquid together — to a container and rest overnight in the refrigerator. The flavour penetration that occurs during this cold rest is the reason the dish should not be served immediately. When retrieved, the liquid will have set to a light jelly around the pieces.
5. 5
   Lift the pork from the jellied liquid and set aside. Skim any solidified fat from the surface of the liquid, then pour the liquid into a small saucepan. Reduce over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it thickens to a lacquer-like glaze that coats the back of a spoon. The colour will deepen to a mahogany sheen.
6. 6
   Warm the pork pieces gently in the reduced glaze, turning to coat each face. Serve in shallow bowls, spooning additional glaze over each portion. Scatter thinly sliced negi across the surface and place a small measure of prepared karashi alongside. The karashi is not garnish — its sharpness is required to cut the richness of the fat.