Vietnamese Pork with Caramel

A year ago, I published my culinary journey of Ho Chi Minh (which you can read HERE). I promised you some recipes. So here’s a new one with this delicious caramel pork. Its beautiful color is totally natural and the sauce is very rich in flavor. Many recipes suggest a fairly short cooking time, but I prefer to get a very tender meat, and the only way to do that is to cook it longer. You can serve this pork (and cook it at the same time) in the traditional Vietnamese earthenware dish and/or accompany it with hard-boiled egg quarters.

recipe for 2-3 people:

-600g of pork (here I used cut up pork belly, but pork loin will also do)
-100g of sugar
-3 tablespoons of nuoc mâm
-1 teaspoon chicken stock powder
-2 tablespoons of oil
-1 shallot
-1 or 2 Chinese chives
-1 small red pepper
-1 hard-boiled egg
-black pepper from the mill

For this dish, I used fresh brisket. I simply removed the skin which you can of course leave on. This piece is quite fatty. It is often this piece that is in this dish in Vietnam. Don’t hesitate to use boneless loin.

Put it in a container and add 20g of sugar (out of 100), the 3 tablespoons of nuoc mâm, the poultry stock powder. Mix well.

Put the remaining 80g of sugar in a saucepan over fairly high heat.

Let it melt gently without burning it.

It must have a nice color. When it is, pour 350ml of water into the pan. It will make some noise, that’s normal!

Add the meat with its marinade.

Pour in the oil and bring to a boil.

Cut the shallot into small pieces. Take the whitest part of the chives and cut them into pieces. The same goes for the little red pepper.

Head for the pot! For the chili, you can remove some of the seeds to avoid having a dish that is too strong. This is not the purpose of this recipe.

Now let cook on moderate heat for at least 1 to 1.5 hours.

After this time, the meat should be very tender and the sauce should thicken slightly. The color becomes red and the fat of the meat transparent. Add ground black pepper.

If the meat is not cooked, add a little water and continue cooking. You can start over until it’s perfect to your liking! As a comment below says, the sauce should be quite liquid after all.