Hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re adding to our series dedicated to the Bay Area restaurant scene with a shot at the newest menu item on the Woo Can Cook pop up menu, which is a Taiwanese Braised Pork Belly, or “lu rou fan,” (I’m allowed to feature my own restaurant in this series…right? Idunno. Doesn’t matter, I make the rules anyway). For those unfamiliar, a lu rou fan (or often more colloquially, just simply “roufan”),is a classic Taiwanese comfort food that features a slow cooked pork belly which has been braised in dark soy sauce for a deeply rich, tender and savory piece of pork.

In addition, rou fan is also most often accompanied in its braise by a wide variety of toasted spices to achieve its fragrant and aromatic nature as well. Today we’ll be doing this with a classic licorice-leaning combination of star anise, cinnamon, and Sichuan peppercorn (or in other words, any or all of the spices found in Chinese 5 spice, which fun fact, is not actually limited to five spices).  In addition to our pork belly, we’ll also be taking advantage of our long dark soy sauce braise as an opportunity to make some brown “tea” eggs by throwing in some soft bowled eggs during the braise. Then finally finishing this all off with some crispy low and slow cooked caramelized shallots for a tasty sweet finishing garnish. Hope you try it.

It will be out on Friday December 17, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

We're live streaming every Tues/Thurs at 6:30PM PST, with new recipes out every Friday!