Slow Cooked Pork (in the Rice Cooker)

This is a slight variation of a firm Cook Japan family favourite…buta no kakuni (Japanese braised pork belly).  Mrs Cook Japan is loving our local supermarket’s so called “forgotten cuts”, in this case pork cheeks… 

…so it was still pork, just that it happened to be cheeks and not belly…I have to say if you are a fan of slow cooking pork cheeks are a wonderful cut of meat for this type of dish with a fabulous texture.

So the recipe…Mrs Cook Japan’s secret  is to cook the meat in earl grey tea for 1-1.5 hours until it is really tender, she then changes this to fresh water and adds ginger, garlic,dried lily flowers and daikon (long white Japanese radish) along with soya sauce, mirin, sake and sugar which gives the dish its lovely sweet syrupiness.  The whole thing is put in the rice cooker and left to cook for a couple of hours, after which a few spring onions and leeks go in and everything is left on “keep warm” until its time to eat.

One of the great things about this dish is the way the daikon soaks up the sauce, creating this wonderful marbling effect and making it absolutely delicious…

The finished pork just falls apart on your fork/chopsticks, the tenderness of the meat and flavour is superb and only increases with time (especially if there’s some left for the following day). 

Served on a bed of rice (thankfully we have 2 rice cookers for when it comes to making meals like this), the only drawback was having friends pop round…once they’d had a bowl as well it meant was nothing left for me reheat tomorrow…

Double donburi delight

Yeah, not one but two bowls of food…double donburi delight!

I was still a bit peckish after my bowl of gyu-don…didn’t need to eat, but was suddenly given the glorious excuse of my wife also cooking up a batch of “buta no kakuni” – a real favourite.  For those of yet to try this delicious dish, its essentially Japanese braised pork belly.

I’m a huge fan of this dish, its a brilliant way to cook pork belly…and it goes wonderfully with sake.

 

 
My wife’s killer recipe for buta no kakuni is to cook the pork belly in earl grey tea for 1-1.5 hours until it is really tender, she then changes this to fresh water and adds ginger, garlic, leeks/spring onions along with soya sauce, mirin, sake and sugar which gives the dish its lovely sweet syrupiness.  The dish is then left to simmer on a low-heat for around 2-hours until the liquid is almost gone and reduced to a sauce.

Try this, its a fantastic way to cook belly pork – there’s a bit left in the pan, tomorrow I’ll eat these remnants and the flavours will be even deeper, yummy!

As for my "entree", by the time the pork belly was done I'd already tucked into a nice bowl of gyu-don for dinner – essentially a “beef bowl”.  Its lovely thin slices of beef that are simmered in a sauce (made from soya sauce, dashi and mirin) and some onions – my wife then popped a dash of corn flour in to just thicken the sauce a little and make it stick to the beef.  Throw some pickles, or in my case shichimi (seven flavour chilli pepper) and you can sit back and enjoy a lovely meal. 

(Of course the rice for both was out of our Cook Japan rice cooker…where else?)



If you love a bit of gyu-don - check out my blog on the packet of "Yoshinoya Gyu-don" I was sent from Japan...oishii!!
For more information visit: www.cookjapan.co.uk