Best Shanghai Style Pork Chops Recipes

SHANGHAI-STYLE BRAISED PORK BELLY (HONG SHAO ROU)

Steps:

• Start by cutting your pork belly into 3/4-inch thick pieces.
• Bring a pot of water to a boil. Blanch the pork belly pieces for a couple minutes. This gets rid of impurities and starts the cooking process. Take the pork out of the pot, rinse, and set aside.
• Over low heat, add the oil and sugar to your wok. Melt the sugar slightly and add the pork. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the pork is lightly browned.
• Turn the heat back down to low and add shaoxing cooking wine, regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and water.
• NOTE: It's very important to the color and flavor of this dish that you have both kinds of soy sauce! Just head to your local Asian market, buy a bottle of each, and it will last you a year!
• Cover and simmer over medium heat for about 45 minutes to 1 hour until pork is fork tender. Every 5-10 minutes, stir to prevent burning and add more water if it gets too dry.
• Once the pork is fork tender, if there is still a lot of visible liquid, uncover the wok, turn up the heat, and stir continuously until the sauce has reduced to a glistening coating.

SHANGHAI-STYLE BRAISED PORK

Steps:

• Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the pork. Return to the boil, skim, reduce the heat and simmer gently, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Drain thoroughly.
• Using a potato peeler, remove 8 strips of zest from the orange. Put the star anise, cinnamon sticks, cumin seeds, dried chillies and orange zest in a piece of muslin and tie together tightly.
• Make the braising liquid by combining all the ingredients in a very large pot and bringing the liquid to a simmer. Add the bag of spices and the blanched pork, and bring back to a simmer, partially covered, skimming all the while.
• Cover the pot tightly and continue to simmer gently for 3 hours, until the pork fat and rind are very soft and tender. You can do this up to a day ahead, let the pork cool in the liquid, chill overnight, then reheat gently in the liquid before serving.
• Cut the bok choi in halves or quarters depending on their size, or the Chinese leaves into 5cm/2in pieces. When the pork is done, remove it from the liquid. Remove the skin and cut the meat into small pieces. Add the bok choi to the pot and cook over high heat until it is very tender about 3 minutes. Remove the bok choi from the cooking liquid and place on a warm dish. Arrange the pork on top.
• Skim off all the fat from the braising liquid and boil it to reduce it by about half. Pour some over the meat to moisten it and serve the rest separately. (You will probably have a lot leftover.) Serve with rice.

SHANGHAI STYLE PORK CHOPS

Steps:

• Mix the water, egg, flour and salt into a batter.
• Dip chops into batter and coat completely. Remove from batter and set aside.
• Mix all sauce ingredients.
• Pour oil into skillet. (I used about 4 T; the original recipe says "enough to cover chops" - I just didn't want to use that much).
• Put chops in hot oil, reduce flame and brown about 4 minutes, then turn over and brown on other side. Take chops out and drain.
• Over low flame, heat sauce in a large skillet, stirring about 2 minutes till thickened.
• Add chops and simmer about 5 minutes (till chops are cooked through.
• Good served with rice or noodles.

SHANGHAI RED-BRAISED PORK WITH EGGS

Steps:

• Hard-boil the eggs in a pan of boiling water, then cool and shell them. In each egg, make 6 - 8 shallow slashes lengthways to allow the flavors of the stew to enter. Smack the ginger and spring onion gently with the flat side of a Chinese cleaver or a rolling pin to loosen their fibers.
• Put the pork in a pan, cover with cold water, bring to the boil over a high flame and boil for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse it under the cold tap. When cool enough to handle, cut the meat through the skin into 1 - 1 1/2-in (2-3cm) cubes (if your piece of belly is thick, you may want to cut each piece in half so they end up more cube-like).
• Heat the oil in a seasoned wok over a high flame. Add the ginger, spring onion, star anise and cassia and stir-fry briefly until they smell wonderful. Add the pork and fry for another 1 - 2 minutes until the meat is faintly golden and some of the oil is running out of the fat. Splash the Shaoxing wine around the edges of the pan. Add the hard-boiled eggs and stock or hot water, along with the light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce and the sugar. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Pour into a pot or a bowl, allow to cool, then chill overnight. In the morning, remove the layer of pale fat that has settled on the surface. Tip the meat and jellied liquid back into a wok, reheat gently, then boil over a high flame to reduce the sauce, stirring constantly. Remove and discard the ginger, spring onion and whole spices. After 10 - 15 minutes, when the liquid has reduced by about half, stir in the remaining dark soy sauce.
• Shortly before you wish to serve, bring to the boil over a high flame and reduce the sauce to about an inch of dark, sleek gravy. Turn out into a serving dish. Then go and welcome your son back from his imperial civil service examinations!
• If you have any leftovers - unlikely, in my experience - you can reheat them with a little water and some dried bamboo shoot, winter melon, tofu knots, deep-fried tofu puffs or radishes. In fact, you might wish, like some of my Chinese friends, to red-braise odd scraps of fatty pork just to cook vegetables, because it makes them so delicious.
• Shanghai red-braised pork
• Omit the eggs and increase the amount of pork to 1kg. Use only 1 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 1/2 tbsp plus 1 tsp dark soy sauce, 2 1/2 tbsp sugar and 2 cups (500ml) hot water.

WALTER KEI'S SHANGHAI-STYLE PORK AND BEAN SPROUTS

Steps:

• Slice the pork into 1/4-inch-thick slices, then stack the slices and cut into 2-inch-long matchsticks. Put the matchsticks in a shallow bowl and add the garlic, 2 teaspoons of the rice wine, the cornstarch, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper. Stir to combine.
• Heat 14-inch flat-bottomed wok over high heat until a bead of water vaporizes within 1 to 2 seconds of contact. Swirl in the olive oil and add the pork, spread it around it in the wok. Cook undisturbed 20 seconds, letting the pork begin to brown. Then, using a metal spatula, stir-fry the pork until it is no longer pink, about 1 minute. Add the bean sprouts, then remaining 2 teaspoons rice wine, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes or until the pork and bean sprouts are just cooked through.

PORK CHOPS, CHINESE STYLE

Steps:

• Pound pork chops to thin them a bit; combine next five ingredients and marinate the chops in the mixture for 30 minutes, then drain.
• Dredge pork chops with cornstarch.
• Heat oil in a wok or skillet; fry chops until golden brown; cook about 5 minutes each side.
• Drain on paper towel.
• Place on a platter and garnish with cilantro.