Clay pot pork

photo: courtesy of gourmet.com 

Have you ever seen the series, Diary of a Foodie on PBS?  Pretty much every time I am watching TV and flipping channels, if a show has anything to do with food, I will stop and watch it.  The episode was on Vietnamese food and the host made this fairly easy recipe using pork shoulder.  I posted a recipe for pork barbecue a few weeks ago, and here is another very different take on it.  Last year, my Mom and sister and I went to Ben Pao in Chicago for dinner and my Mom got a dish similar to this which was amazing! I am making this for dinner tonight, and I hope it tastes as good as it looks on TV.  Cooking meat in caramel sauce is a popular technique in Vietnam; the sweet/bitter sauce makes a perfect foil for slow-braised pork. This is traditionally made in a clay pot, but a heavy saucepan or small Dutch oven also works well. The relatively large amount of fish sauce is important for the flavor of the dish. Serve the pork over white rice. 

    1/3 cup sugar

• 3/4 cup chicken stock or store-bought low-sodium broth or water
• 1/3 cup Asian fish sauce, preferably Vietnamese (I am going to use 1/4 cup)
• 3 shallots, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced diagonally, white and green parts kept separate
• 1 lb trimmed boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

• ACCOMPANIMENT: 

  cooked rice

•  Cook sugar in a dry 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, without stirring, until it begins to melt. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally with a fork, until sugar has melted into a deep golden caramel. Carefully add stock and fish sauce (caramel will harden and steam vigorously) and cook, stirring, until caramel is dissolved. Add shallots, garlic, and white part of scallions and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 4 minutes.

• Toss pork with pepper in a bowl and stir into sauce. Bring to a simmer, then cover pan, reduce heat to low, and braise pork, stirring once or twice, until very tender, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours.

• Stir in scallion greens and serve with rice.

   

  By cooking it so long on low heat, the pork becomes super tender so you can pull it apart very easily.  And, except for the fish sauce, which until now I have never purchased before, the other ingredients aren’t hard to find.  Let me know if you try this too and how it turned out!