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 The Art of Red-Braising

Red braising, also known as red cooking, red stewing, or Chinese stewing, is a traditional Chinese method of slow braising food to adequately flavor and tenderize it. The resulting dish has a reddish-brownish color, left by ingredients like soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, and spices. It’s a staple of Chinese home cooking, and I have many positive memories associated with my grandmother’s long day of stewing meat just for me to come home from school to enjoy a hot meal. It’s a great way to prepare any kind of food, especially meat, and the flavor profile distinguishes itself heavily from Western methods of braising or slow-cooking. As someone who started cooking more seriously after the pandemic began, red braising has quickly become one of my favorite and most comfortable ways of cooking food, and I’m hoping that more people can be exposed to this amazingly delicious cooking technique!

The most commonly associated ingredient to red braise is pork belly. Red braised pork belly is one of the ultimate comfort foods for Chinese children as part of home cooking, and it is absolutely divine over some rice. You can make it by following the steps below:

1. Start by cutting your pork belly into medium-sized rectangular chunks. Some butchers fail to remove the skin on the surface of the pork belly, and so you can sear it off or use a razor to trim the hairs. Size and shape can be up to preference, where total cooking time will vary based on size of chunks.

2. Bring a pot of water to a boil and parboil the pork belly pieces for a couple minutes to remove impurities. 

3. Take the pork out of the pot, rinse, and set aside.

4. Over medium-low heat, add oil and sugar to your wok to make caramel. Add the pork once the caramel is a red-brown color — this gives the pork the signature red-brown color of the red braising technique. Stir until the pork chunks are coated on all ends.

5. Add cooking wine, regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and cover the pork with water. Then, add spices as desired. Popular ones include ginger, garlic, star anise, Chinese cinnamon, Szechuan peppercorns, cloves, and various others.

6. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. 

7. Once the pork is fork tender, if there is still a lot of visible liquid, uncover the wok, turn up the heat, and stir continuously until the sauce has reduced to a glistening coating. 

And just like that, your red braised pork belly is done! The beauty of the technique is that you don’t really need that many ingredients. You can substitute most of these spices and items for just about anything, and you can even forgo most of the ingredient list. For sugar, you can use brown sugar, rock sugar, white sugar, honey, or just about anything. You can even use any kind of meat, as the technique applies to chicken, beef, and even tofu or vegetables. It’s incredibly flexible and most of the time spent on making the dish actually comes from the simmering process. Hopefully, after reading this, you’re inspired to try it, or at least watch this video of a professional chef demonstrating her method of making the dish.