Vietnamese Braised Pork Belly (Thit Kho)

Growing up, one of my favorite dishes to eat was a caramelized braise pork belly with egg (Thit Kho).  I had made this dish about two months ago with pork butt since I did not have access to pork belly.  It was still good, but it is nothing compared to pork belly.  Pork belly is not readily available near where I live and to go to Asiantown is too far out for me to drive to pick up pork belly.  Luckily, I was down in Asiantown for brunch Sunday and had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong Market to pick up some food items that I generally cannot get near home.

I had picked up 15 pounds of pork belly to cure to make bacon, but I had set aside about two pounds of it to make Thit Kho.  

The pork belly was simply seasoned with five spice powder and I let it marinade in the fridge over night.  The preparation of this dish is very simple, but very time consuming because it has to be braised for a couple hours.  Since I do not have a couple hours to wait during the week for dinner, I cheated a bit and used a crock pot.

I had come home for lunch yesterday and put everything into a crock pot.  As I was cooking my steak for lunch, I hard boiled some eggs and started preparing everything else to put into the crock pot.

To begin preparing the meat, I had to make a simple "caramel sauce" that consisted of just sugar and water.  I let the sauce turn to an amber color and tossed in the pork belly to caramelize it a little bit.  I did this for a few minutes and placed the meat into the crock pot and began to build my braising liquid.  In the same pan, I added in some coconut water and water to "deglaze" the pan.  I added in some soy sauce, oyster sauce, sambal, and sesame oil to the water and brought it to a boil.  I poured it over the pork belly in the crock pot.  When the eggs were done, I peeled it added it to the crock pot.  I added in enough of the braising liquid to easily cover the meat and the eggs.

I turned the crock pot to low and let the lid half closed and back to work I go.  

When I got home, the apartment smelled delicious!  I shut the crock pot off when I got home and set the meat and eggs aside and poured the liquid into a pan and let the braising liquid reduce.  

The real fun begins...building my plate.  I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like already so it was not difficult.  I thinly sliced some cucumber, made some green onion curls and chopped up a red pepper.  Sunday night, I had began pickling some bean sprouts (dua gia) and I was going to use this to build some height to my plate.  

The overall dish was amazing.  The pork belly was perfectly cooked and had taken in all the flavors from the braising liquid.  There are not enough words out there to describe how delicious pork belly in general is.  The meat just melts in your mouth.  Then my other favorite part of the dish, the hard boiled eggs.  The egg took on the flavors of the liquid and on top of that, took on the color of the liquid that makes a great presentation when sliced in half.  The pickled bean sprouts was really good as well.