Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice (Lu Rou Fan) — Street Food Institution

Place the diced pork belly in a cold wok or heavy pot. Set over medium heat and render until the fat begins to turn translucent and the pieces colour lightly at the edges. No additional oil is needed. The pork is ready when the fat has released visibly into the pan and the lean pieces have lost their raw pink.

Add the fried shallots and stir through the rendered fat. Add the Shaoxing rice wine and allow the alcohol to cook off for one minute. Add the soy sauce, rock sugar, and five-spice powder. Pour in the water until the pork is barely covered. Stir to dissolve the rock sugar. The liquid should smell of deep soy and warm spice before the lid goes on.

This is where the dish lives or dies. Bring the pot to a bare simmer — the surface should tremble, never boil — and braise, partially covered, for 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours. At no point should the liquid be at a rolling boil; hard boiling tightens the meat and breaks the emulsion of fat and sauce. The dish is done when every piece of pork fat has become completely translucent and gelatinous, the sauce is a deep mahogany, and a spoon dragged through it leaves a slow-closing channel.

Add the peeled hard-boiled eggs to the braising liquid for the final 30 minutes of cooking. They are ready when their exteriors have taken on a deep amber stain and, when halved, the yolk is fully set and mahogany-tinged at the rim.

Taste the braising liquid and adjust: it should be sweet-savoury with a rounded soy depth. Serve immediately over freshly steamed rice — not old or dry rice, which will not absorb the sauce — with a halved braised egg, a portion of rinsed suan cai, and the blanched greens alongside.