Addendum

OK, I still want to emphasize that everyone should give the Chinese Braised Pork Belly a go. It's amazing. Really. It's a recipe from Michelle Humes at Serious Eats. 

But I’m not one to ignore the practicalities of everyday life. And although people seemed to think the preceding recipe looked great, a lot of people complained.

Of course, this is my nondescript little food blog, so let’s adjust our expectations a bit. When I say “a lot,” read “two or three.”

And they said things like:

“That looks good, but I can’t find fresh pork belly where I live.”

“I don’t have an Asian market in my town.”

“My life is a hollow lie.”

And so on. Well, readers, you spoke and I listened. Actually, you typed and I read. But I recognize that not everyone can find pork belly in their local market. However, everyone can find pork shoulder. So I used the same method to cook a pork shoulder for y’all, just to see if it would work.

And it did.

Before we get to that, though, let me address one other potential concern. I suspect that the people who mentioned that pork belly is difficult to find may say that Chinese five-spice powder difficult to find as well. If only there were some quick and convenient way to obtain such things without leaving the comfort and safety of one’s home. Oh well, no sense dreaming for something that can never be.

Anyway, pork shoulder—sometimes known as pork butt, for reasons unknown to me—is quite easy to find in grocery stores. It’s a fatty cut—not as fatty as pork belly, but good enough. And ignore the nutritional aspects and just embrace this, OK? You need fat and connective tissues in meat for braising; it’s what keeps braised meats from drying out. You can skim the fat off the final sauce if it makes you feel better.

This is a boneless shoulder, which weighed in at about three pounds. You can use a bone-in one as well, since you’re going to cut it into chunks anyway. My store had boneless ones on sale, so that’s what I went with.

Perhaps foolishly, I elected to cook the entire thing, rather than just using a one-pound chunk as before. My idea was to see if one could feed a large group with this—the one-pound pork belly from before would probably feed 3-4 people at most.

As before, I melted the sugar in the oil and browned the pork on all sides. Had to do it in batches this time, though, as my pan wasn’t big enough to brown everything at once.

Then, as before, add the five-spice powder, cook for a few seconds, then add water to cover, with ginger, garlic, salt, soy sauce, blah blah blah.

So, after simmering for about 3 hours, it looked thus:

And as before, I put the meat on a cutting board...

And proceeded to slice/shred it. 

Now, we come to the only problem that I had. Last time, if you recall, there was a huge amount of liquid left after the pork was done, and it took a long time to boil it down to a glaze-like sauce.

This time, I had the opposite problem—there was very little liquid left. Part of the problem was that I was cooking three times the amount of meat I had cooked before--with all of that in the pot, there wasn't as much liquid as the first time. The use of the (slightly) leaner shoulder rather than the belly may have been a factor as well. 

Anyhow, if I had boiled that amount of juice down to a thickened consistency, I would’ve only had about a tablespoon or so to sauce about 3 pounds of meat. Problematic. I tried to extend it by adding some broth to the pan and reducing the result, but that didn’t seem to be working. So I shrugged, stirred the meat into the broth and decided that this would be more of a pulled pork sort of dish than last time.

And it worked, IMHO (do people still say that?). The final result was a bit less decadent and lush than the original version, but it was still damned good. You can do the serve-it-on-slider-buns-with-spicy-mayo-and-cabbage thing that we did last time, or you could serve it with rice and vegetables, or whatever you like. Bon appetìt, y’all.

Again, the original and complete recipe from Michelle Humes can be found here.