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Sawadee ka, welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. Today's recipe is of this beautiful braised pork belly that went viral in the in the smallest sense of the word cuz it went viral in my Patreon Discord, which is the private chat for our Patreon member. So, it started out with one person asking me for this recipe because he fell in love with it in Thailand. And then other people started chiming in saying, "Oh yes, me too. I'd love that recipe, too." Next thing you know, everyone was so excited about this recipe that they couldn't wait for my recipe, so they all went and made it using some other recipe that they found online. And for a brief moment, I thought I was relieved of the responsibility,
but then they came back and said, "You know what? That recipe wasn't great. Can we still have the Hot Thai Kitchen version?" So, here we are. You've got my Patreon members to thank for this video. So, what is this dish that people got so excited about? Well, it is called Moo Hong, which is a southern Thai dish made from pork belly slowly braised with soy sauce and dark soy sauce and palm sugar until it's super tender. It's luscious, salty, sweet, and just absolutely one of the best hidden gems of Thailand. So, I'm actually not surprised at all by the enthusiasm of people who've experienced it in Thailand. It is not commonly found outside of Thailand, but lucky for us, it is actually quite easy to make at
home. Takes a bit of time, but it's mostly hands-off. And I'll also tell you about the cultural background of this dish a little bit later cuz it's actually quite interesting, but for now, let us start by looking at the best pork belly for this dish. Choosing the right pork belly for Moo Hong is actually very important because different parts of the pork belly will have different amounts of fat. And if you're not careful, you might end up with a piece that's got more fat than meat, then it's not that great, right? So, when you're at the store, if they are already pre-cut into pieces, don't just randomly grab a piece and walk away. You want to be that auntie or that uncle that grabs every
piece and looks at it and make sure you pick the one with the most amount of meat. Ideally, what I do is I go to the butcher so I can sweet-talk them into cutting a piece from their bigger piece that has the most amount of meat. So, as you can see, this piece here has lots of meat, nice and even layers, not too much fat. Also, skin on, that's the traditional way that we do it, and the skin will also give off a lot of collagen that adds richness to the sauce. But, if you don't love the skin, you don't like to eat the pork skin, it's not a huge deal to leave it out. If all pork belly is a little too much fat for you, you can do this with half pork belly and half pork butt, aka pork shoulder. Just so there's more meat for
you to eat at the end of the day. However, traditionally, this is an all pork belly dish, but it's not going to be the only thing that we eat in a typical meal, right? So, we'll have the braised pork belly with a leaner protein and then some vegetables. So, this will be one of a few things on the table. And on the website, I will give you some suggestions on what are some easy sides that you can serve with this. All right, let's get prepping. So, I've cut my pork belly into like 2-in chunks. And now, this looks huge, but these will shrink a lot, like way more than you think. So, you want to make them at least twice as big as you want them to be at the end. And for this recipe, I recommend
2 to 1 and 1/2 in cube, okay? Now, we're going to marinate them simply with some soy sauce and some dark soy sauce. Now, I would normally use Thai black soy sauce for this, but I can no longer source Thai black soy sauce in Vancouver. So, I've been using Chinese dark soy sauce, which works perfectly fine. All right. So, I'm just going to give everything a little bit of a jiggle and a mix. You could do this in like a ziplock bag and then you just shake the whole thing. But, just give them a quick toss and I'm going to let this marinate for 30 minutes and up to overnight or really as much time as you have. Like, if you do this and then go prep other things and you cook them right away, that's fine, too, because the marinade
is actually technically optional. The pork is going to braise for a couple of hours in the liquid, so they will be flavorful one way or another. But, if you do marinate, you will allow for even deeper flavor penetration. And you know how soups and stews always taste better the next day? Well, that's because flavors have had time to penetrate even deeper into all the chunks. So, that's what we are going for here. But, if you don't have time, it is not a big deal. So, I'm going to flip this back to the meat side before I let it marinate, because I'm more interested in the meat being flavorful than the skin. And if you have time and you remember, you can come turn it around halfway in between,
but it's not necessary. There we go. And while that's marinating, let's prep our herb paste. I've got here some black peppercorns, garlic, and cilantro roots or stems. I'm going to start by grinding the black peppercorns finely. Thai cooking uses white pepper most of the time, but in the south, black pepper is more common. Then, I'm going to add the garlic and the cilantro stems, which you want to cut down into short pieces, so you don't end up with any long strings. And then pound everything into a paste. This mixture here is called sam glur, which means three friends, and it is one of our basic herb paste used in many Thai dishes. This paste doesn't have to be super fine. Once you no longer have
large pieces of garlic, you're good to go. And now we're pretty much ready to cook. I'm going to add a little bit of oil to my pot here, and then in goes our three friends, and I'm going to saute that on medium-low heat until it starts to turn slightly golden. Then I'm going to deglaze with some unsalted chicken stock or pork stock. And then scrape off everything that might have stuck to the bottom. Now I'm going to add some palm sugar, or you can use dark brown sugar if you want. And then I'm going to add all the pork and all of the marinade.
You want to choose a pot that's just big enough for the pork to fit snugly together, so the amount of liquid will come up just below or at the level of the pork. If it's too much below, you can add just a touch of water, but not too much. And I should have done this the first time, but you also want to make sure that the skin is sideways, so it is submerged in the liquid. Bring the liquid to a gentle simmer, and then I'm going to loosely cover it and let it simmer for at first 1 hour. So while that's going, I wanted to address a question some of you might have. For those experienced braisers, you might be wondering, "Wait, why
didn't I sear the pork and get some browning? Because don't I always say browning is flavor?" Oh yes, browning is flavor. But for this dish, as you'll see, the sauce will be so intensely flavorful that whatever flavor gains you get from browning the pork, you won't be able to tell the difference. I know because I tried it both ways, so please spare yourself the oil splatters, okay? And also, if you want to sear, then you can't marinate, okay? So because the marinade is going to burn. So then you give that up, too. And just as a fun fact, searing meat until brown is not really a Thai cooking technique. So, traditionally, there's no searing involved for Moo Hong. Now, I want to talk about the cultural
background of Moo Hong because it's actually different from anything I've ever shared on this channel. So, Moo Hong is a local dish of Phuket. Yes, Phuket, that sandy beach island that is one of the most popular tourist destination in Thailand. And Phuket is actually culturally unique because it is the hub of Peranakan people who live in Thailand, and Moo Hong is a Peranakan dish. Now, Peranakan people who live in Thailand are mostly people of mixed Hokkien Chinese and Malay heritage. You can also find uh versions of Moo Hong in other places where Peranakan people also live, namely Malaysia and Singapore. And of course, there is a Chinese version of this dish as well. That's a very brief gist of it. For those of you who are
interested, I'll go into more detail in the blog post. So, this is what it should look like after the first hour of braising. I've already flipped these once, and I'm going to give them another flip just to make sure that the bits that were above the liquid gets a chance to be submerged. And now, I'm going to let it continue to braise with the lid open for another hour to hour and a half because now I want the liquid to reduce to a thick, rich sauce. Now, during this time, I'll come back to stir it once or twice. Keep the heat low cuz you don't want it to dry up too soon. But if it does, you can just add a splash of water.
I want to take a quick break and tell you about an exciting new membership program for hotthaikitchen.com called the Yum Club, where you can get exclusive bonus recipes and browse my website ad-free. If you're a Thai food lover who's ready to move beyond the popular dishes that everybody knows, and you want to learn off-the-beaten-path dishes that you can only find in Thai homes, then Yum Club is where you get them. And once you join, you can access these bonus recipes right on hot thai kitchen.com. You will also get to browse my website ad-free, so you can cook with no distractions. All of Yum Club recipes are also very quick and easy because these are real dishes that I am making at home to feed my family, and with a
little kid, trust me, I do not have a lot of time to make dinner. It's $3.50 a month for the annual membership, and you can cancel anytime. If you've been enjoying my recipes, you're going to love it even more with Yum Club, and you'll be supporting my work here at Hot Thai Kitchen, and for that, I thank you very much. You can join Yum Club today. Just go to hotthaikitchen.com, and I'll put the link in the description below. Okay. Uh, it smells so good in here. So, the pork is has been 2 hours, so I'm just going to turn it off for now while I check for doneness. And by the way,
towards the last, like, 30-45 minutes, you don't want to just set a timer and walk away. You want to be in the vicinity. Keep an eye on it just to make sure it doesn't boil dry by accident and then burns. And then, while you're at it, keep sort of basting the pork or flipping them or stirring them, just so that, um, you the part that's out of the water stays moist over time, okay? Now, how do you know it's done? We're going to fork poke it with a fork, and we want to find the thickest, meatiest piece of the whole thing, which looks like this one. And when you go in, it should go in with no resistance. It should be very, very tender, and that's where we're at, so I'm happy about that.
Now, very important is you need to taste the seasoning because this has reduced a lot. This is sort of the amount of liquid that we want, but you also always need to check cuz there's a real chance this right now is too salty. Because if you reduce it too far, this could very well be too salty. But before I can taste, I actually can't access the sauce cuz it's covered by a layer of fat. As you can't really see too well here, but there's like a this much fat at the top, which I need to remove first so I can access it. And I like to tilt the pot and use a ladle that's thin, like those cheap ladles make the best fat skimmer. And then just skim off So much fat. So you want to get rid of that. If you've got fancy fat separator tools
that you want to use, you can do that as well. But I'm just going to go old school here. If you're not serving this today, you could also just put it in the fridge, let the fat solidify, and then it'll be easier to remove that way. But I am eating this now. Okay, you don't [snorts] have to get out every last drop. My rule of thumb is basically once I can no longer skim without taking along a like a whole bunch of sauce with it, then you're good to go. Um I could probably skim a little bit more here. And if you want to keep that for cooking, you can. Okay, I'm starting to have a hard time skimming without losing sauce, so I'm going to call it done. And that's not so bad. And then I want to just bring your attention to how much sauce there is.
That's sort of what you're going for. You should have about enough sauce that it comes up halfway up the pork pieces. This is not a soup, okay, or a stew. Like it's it shouldn't be completely swimming in sauce, um but it should have enough sauce that you have plenty to pour over your rice. And that's exactly kind of what we're going for. So now time to taste. So, give it a stir to make sure you're not just taking a whole bunch of fat. It's perfect. Ah, it's so good. Every time I eat it, I am shocked by how good that is because it's such a simple dish. You want it to be salty first, sweet second. A lot of
people make this too sweet and like the sweetness and the fat will just combine to be something very cloying and rich. So, you want this to lead with salt followed by sweet, lots of pepper. Mm. If at this point you taste it and it's too salty, just add a splash of water, no big deal at all. It should be strong because it's going to go on rice, but if it tastes um too weak, you can also just keep it cooking for a little bit longer to reduce the sauce further. So, it's very easily fixable at this stage, which is why you want to taste and fix it now so you don't have any regrets at the dinner table.
All right, let's plate it up. And there is our moo hong, a stunner of a dish. It is rich, salty, slightly sweet, so you want to have it with lots of jasmine rice and some vegetables or salad or something on the side and I'll provide some recipe ideas for those sides in the recipe post. I am so excited about this. Take that piece, a little bit of sauce. Mm. Ah, and it's so tender. Absolutely one of the best things I make on the show. I mean, this is I can't even describe it. Like with rice it's umami is like off the charts, but with just enough sweet to balance and the garlic and the lots of black pepper and
the cilantro stems that add so much complexity. Uh so good. And like when you're done with you may have extra sauce left. That is like liquid gold. Don't pour that down the drain. What I've done is I use that sauce to cook chicken and that chicken was delicious. I mean, like you want to use that sauce until it is gone because of those hours of reducing. There are just like there are few things I can think of that taste better than that. Let me just put it that way. So, the recipe as always will be on hot thai kitchen.com. I really hope you give this one a try. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. Thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time.
Sawasdee ka.
