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Beijing Recipe: Chairman Mao's Red-Braised Pork Part of the Places of a Lifetime series from Traveler magazine

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Ingredients:

1 pound pork belly
2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
¾-inch piece fresh ginger, sliced
Star anise
2 dried red chilies
Small cinnamon stick
Soy sauce, salt, and sugar
Scallion greens

 

Directions:

Plunge pork belly into a pan of boiling water and simmer until partially cooked (3-4 minutes). Remove and cut into bite-size chunks. Heat oil and sugar in a wok over medium heat until sugar melts, then raise the heat and stir until sugar turns caramel brown. Add pork and Shaoxing wine. Add ginger, star anise, chilies, cinnamon, and enough water to cover pork. Bring to a boil, then simmer (40-50 minutes). Turn up heat to reduce sauce, and season with soy sauce, salt, and sugar. Garnish with scallion greens.

Servings: Serving size varies.

–Fuchsia Dunlop, from the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from the Hunan Province

 

More Beijing Recipes:

Beijing Multimedia

Know Before You Go: Beijing

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