Asia is generally not thought of as a hot spot for preserved meats, but hidden away in China are some of the most mouth-watering preparations you've never seen.
And to those of you who love Chinese cuisine, this should come as no surprise, for her dried and preserved and brined and salted ingredients are what give these incomparable foods their uniquely Chinese flavor. For example, beans are salted and cured to make everything from fermented black beans (douchi) to yellow bean sauce (doujiang) to crispy bean sauce (dousu) to even soy sauce.
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| Fresh pork belly |
Like so many of these vegetal creations, meats -- including just about everything that swims, crawls, or flies -- can count on some the folks in some corner of China eyeing it for possible preservation. Although these techniques were initially designed to carry people through the coldest months of winter, nowadays when refrigeration and freezers make this little more than a past concern, cured things serve more than ever as easy and delicious ways to add depth of flavor to just about any dish.
When I lived in Taipei, one of my favorite haunts for hunting down these ingredients was South Gate Market. It had everything: fresh fish and meats, counters full of vegetables and fruit, stalls filled with women busy making local foods, bins piled with candy and dried ingredients, and a special section that arrayed dried and cured animal parts.
There really is no other way to describe it. These were animal parts in all their wondrous incarnations: split whole fish, strings of sausages, and smoky pork legs all held from the ceiling on long poles, especially in the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year. Flattened dried octopus and squid were hung up in fantastical dioramas. Splayed chickens, ducks, geese, and even squab and quail hovered over the merchants like aromatic angels.
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| An array of seasonings for the meat |
Not everyone bought their charcuterie, though. Some, like my late father-in-law, who was Hakka Chinese, enjoyed making their own, which is perfectly reasonable since these meats are often quite easy to make, as with today's recipe.
Without a doubt the master of the family kitchen, Dad was a great cook and loved the things that reminded him of his ancestral home in rural Guangdong. He used to make cured meats and sausages when the family still lived in Taiwan, and this is very similar to one of his recipes.
The meat has no saltpeter or curing salt in it, so it of course turns brown as it cures. The peppery crust, though, completely seasons the meat and seems to permeate every cell. This recipe will provide you with extra Ground Roasted Salt and Pepper, which you will soon find many uses for, as it is one of those seasoned salts that seem to complement just about every type of protein, including bean curd and eggs.
In the next post we will turn these beautiful cured pork strips into some divinely simple family dishes. Just like Dad's.
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| Seasoned salt rub |
Spice-crusted salt pork Hakka style
Kejia xian zhurou 客家鹹豬肉
Hakka
Kejia xian zhurou 客家鹹豬肉
Hakka
1 pound natural pork belly
3 tablespoons white liquor (gaoliang; see Tips)
4
tablespoons whole Sichuan peppercorns
2
tablespoons whole white peppercorns
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
½ teaspoon
five spice powder
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
5
tablespoons sea salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2. Dry fry all of the peppercorns, five spice powder, fennel, and salt (but not the sugar) over low heat until the peppercorns start to pop and the salt turns a darker color. Cool the seasoned salt and then grind finely. Mix about 3 tablespoons of the seasoned salt with the sugar, and then rub this mixture all over the pork strips so that every single area is thoroughly coated. (The rest of the seasoned salt should be sifted and all of the larger grains tossed out; store the fine salt in a covered jar, where it will stay fresh for weeks.)
3. Place the coated pork strips in a plastic container or resealable plastic bag along with any of the white liquor and seasonings that are still hanging around. Cover the container or close up the bag and refrigerate for at least 4 days. Shake the pork around twice a day so that each area of the meat gets evenly cured.
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| Roasted spices & salt |
4. Try a piece to see if it is done to your liking by cutting off an inch and rinsing it thoroughly. Slice it thinly and fry without extra oil; it should have a wonderful aroma of spices and liquor, and you will not need to add any additional seasonings. If you want to let it get more infused with the flavors, leave it in the cure for another day or two. When it's just as you like it, pour off all of the juices and liquor, but don't rinse off the pork. Just remove the amount of pork that you want to cook and keep the rest refrigerated. It will stay perfect for at least a week.
Tips
As always, use the best natural pork available. The pork can come with skin or without, as it doesn't matter here.
Try to get pork that is half fat and half meat. In Chinese, pork belly is known as wuhuarou, or "five flower meat." What this means is that you should ideally have a nice layer of fat under the skin, then a layer of pink meat, then a layer of fat, then a layer of meat followed by a layer of fat. There might even be six layers if you are lucky, although four layers is fine, too.
This layering in pork belly is what makes the cut so luscious when cooked right. As with Dongpo Pork, the fat acts as a buttery interlude between the thin layers of muscle, rendering them tender and juicy.
The best white liquor for this and other cured meat recipes is, in my opinion, Taiwan's gaoliang liquor. The island of Kinmen (aka Jinmen) off the coast of Fujian is renowned for its gaoliang, and while it costs close to $30 for a bottle, it lasts a long time and possesses a wonderful fragrance.
Be sure and sift the leftover seasoned salt before you use it. Sichuan peppercorns, in particular, can be really annoying if left in largish pieces, as they become rock hard and end up feeling like sand between the teeth.
