Vietnamese braised pork with hard-boiled eggs

As a special request from an employee here at work, I attempted to make Vietnamese braised pork with hard-boiled eggs today. I never actually had this dish before but I love braised pork and the picture just made it look so delicious, so I thought, "why not?"

Vietnamese Braised Pork with Hard-Boiled Eggs

Recipe from wanderingchopsticks.com

Cooking time: 1 hour

Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients (for a 2 quart pot)

Nuoc Mau (Vietnamese caramel sauce)

1 lb pork butt or shoulder, sliced into two-inch chunks

3 hard-boiled eggs or more if you'd like

1 medium onion, sliced or diced, and/or a few cloves of garlic if you wish

1 cup fresh coconut juice, or substitute with Coco Rico

about 1 tbsp fish sauce, or more according to taste

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

Optional: if you don't want to make the caramel sauce, you can substitute by adding 2 tbsp Indonesian Kecap Manis

Directions

1. Hard boil eggs, peel shells, and set aside. 
2. Cut the meat into 2 inch wide chunks. Slice or dice onions. Set aside.
3. Make the caramel sauce, then add the pork and stir to color the pork. Add the onion and about 1 cup of coconut juice, or half a can of Coco Rico, and enough water to cover the meat with about an inch of water over. Add the fish sauce, salt, and ground black pepper. Stir again to mix it up. If you like sweeter meat, you can use additional coconut juice in lieu of the water. Taste and adjust sugar or fish if necessary.
4. Turn heat down to medium low and allow to simmer for at least half an hour, ideally an hour. Pork gets more tender the longer it cooks so this is really a personal preference. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
5. About 15 minutes before the pork is done, add the eggs, making sure to put the eggs in the middle of the pot so they can absorb the caramel sauce flavor and color. You don't want to put the eggs too soon because they'll get rubbery.
6. This dish can be pretty fatty if you choose to use pork belly or a skin-on portion, so I'd suggest making this and then refrigerating for several hours or overnight. The excess fat will congeal for easy removal. Just reheat by letting it simmer for a few minutes. Serve with rice.

Vietnamese Caramel Sauce

Recipe from wanderingchopsticks.com

Cooking time: 10 minutes

Yield: for 2-5 quart pot

Ingredients

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1/4 cup water

Directions

1. Heat pot to medium-high and add the sugar with the water. There should be enough water that the sugar is all wet with a little extra water around it. Stir until mixed and sugar dissolved. In about ten minutes or so, the sugar will start to brown. When the mixture becomes caramelized, add the meats and stir to color the meat. 

Nutritional Analysis:
per serving (5.3 oz pork with 1 egg) : 460 calories, 32.3g fat (11.1g saturated, 3.6g polyunsaturated, 14.0g monounsaturated), 7.4g carbohydrates, 0.8g fiber, 33.1g protein

**Helpful tips and common mistakes

To cook a hard-boiled egg perfectly, there are two methods you can follow. The first is to put the raw eggs with enough cold water to cover them in a pot and cook on medium-high heat for 12 minutes. When the 12 minutes is up, drain the eggs and immediately shock in an ice bath. The second method is to put the raw eggs in water just as method 1 and bring to a boil, uncovered, over high heat. Once the water begins to boil, turn off the heat and set your timer for 7 minutes. After 7 minutes, drain the water and immediately shock the eggs in an ice bath. I get a perfectly cooked egg both ways. If there is a gray color around the yolk, that means your eggs have been over-cooked. 

Now for the pork for this recipe, you have a choice of using either pork butt, pork shoulder, or pork belly. Pork belly is obviously the fattier choice, but it also the traditional way to prepare this dish. When cutting your pork shoulder or pork butt, do not remove the fat! The fat is what  helps allow the pork to become tender and is thus, very important to keep.

Making caramel can be a daunting task, but it is simpler than you think. The key is to keep an eye on the sugar to make sure it doesn't burn. Once the sugar turns golden, turn your fire to low since the sugar can easily go from golden to completely burnt. 

Now I did not have granulated sugar so I used brown instead. Brown sugar is very tricky to use because it is already brown so you can't see the coloring of the caramel. If this is the case, use a candy thermometer. At 320-350 degrees, the sugar should turn golden. I made the mistake of not cooking the caramel long enough, which was very visible later on. 

After tasting the braising liquid, I found it to be a bit bland so I added 2 more tbsp of the fish sauce. Once the liquid comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer. If you prefer your meat to have more of a bite, simmer for 30 minutes. I prefer my meat to be tender so I braised the pork for almost 2 hours (keep in mind that I was also cooking 18 pounds of pork instead of the one). 

Now as you can see, the color of my liquid was not a deep caramel color as it should be. However, the flavors were still present. Next time I will make sure to cook the caramel until the right stage to achieve the right color.

Taste-wise, this dish was fabulous! The pork was slightly sweet, slightly salty and incredibly tender. Since I didn't serve the pork with the braising liquid, which was full of fat, it didn't seem as fattening as expected. The pork was served with green curry fried rice, which I must admit, was equally fabulous. This is definitely on my list to make again.