Chinese Breakfast Bowl from Plow SF

Pork shoulder braised in a spicy caramel sauce, served with a fried egg and grilled bok choy over rice.... what's not to love?

I really liked this Chinese breakfast dish from Plow. It was one of my favorite things from the Best of the Bay class I took at the San Francisco Cooking School, and it’s both impressive but reasonably simple to prepare. The sauce alone is quite salty, but with the rice, egg, and vegetables, the dish is perfectly balanced. The pork is silky, full-apart tender thanks to the effects of marinating, searing, then braising what started out as a “cheap” and fatty cut of pork. The sambal oelek lends a surprising amount of heat to the rich sauce, which complements the tenderized pork. The vegetables add some critical brightness (and a better visual), the rice provides a critical vehicle for eating the sauce, and the egg ties everything together.

Making this, I started with a 3.4lb bone-in pork shoulder, which yielded 2.33 lb (1.07 kg) after deboning. Happily, removing the tough fat and cutting the pork into pieces took much less time than similar amounts of lamb leg take me - I finished this in under 30 minutes instead of needing more than 60.

I went on a shopping spree at an Asian market a while ago and wound up with an overabundance of soy sauce, none of which is low-sodium. Reluctant to buy more, I used a dark soy sauce I already had for the marinade, one which was decidedly not low-sodium.

After the 60 minute spell in the soy sauce+sesame oil marinade, the pork needs to be seared over medium-high heat on all sides to develop some nice brown flavor. All these pork pieces required 3 batches for fully browning in my Dutch oven, so roughly 25 minutes of somewhat attentive cooking. I did use the tail end of this time to make the caramel sauce, although you’ll have to be self-confident of your energy level and ability to pay attention to the caramel and pork at the same time.

From start to finish, the caramel sauce took about 8 minutes over medium-high heat. If you don’t want to make the caramel sauce while you are browning the pork, then make the caramel sauce after all the pork is browned. I found it turned into a rock solid sheet of hard caramel while I was finishing up the last of the pork pieces, so much so that I had to gently reheat the caramel “sauce” over low heat to loosen it up enough to pour.

I used a premixed blend of onion, garlic, and ginger at this point, but I’m sure the aromatics listed will work just fine….

You’ll want to resist the temptation to use stock in place of the water, because there’s already plenty of flavor (and more importantly, salt) in this dish. After adding the caramel sauce, marinade, and Sambal Oelek to the Dutch oven, you want to add enough water such that you don’t quite cover the pork. For me, this amounted to 1-⅓ cups of water, but obviously this amount is heavily influenced by the size and shape of your Dutch oven, along with how much pork you’re using.

After adding all the liquids, the pork needs only 1 hour to become meltingly tender. Note that I highly recommend serving this over rice, or some other starchy vehicle for soaking up all the delicious sauce (cauliflower rice, roasted sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, etc.) If you’re going to be serving this with brown rice, now is the time to start the water boiling for the rice to be ready at the same time as the pork.

I also encourage serving the pork with a fried egg and some bok choy, mushrooms, and/or peas (or other greenery), so get yourself prepared for making those just before you’re ready to serve the pork.

Once the pork has been cooking for an hour, give the pork and the sauce a taste (taste each separately). You can continue cooking the pork a little longer, remove the pork pieces and just reduce the sauce another 10-20 minutes, or serve the pork immediately. Which choice you make here should depend on how tender the pork is (if it’s not, keep cooking), how concentrated your sauce already tastes (if it is lacking flavor - the odds are low - reduce it), how salty the sauce is (if it’s pretty salty, don’t reduce it anymore), and how ready you are to eat (e.g., your pork isn’t going to be harmed by continuing to cook a while longer if you’re waiting on company or the rice to finish, etc).

Serve each person a helping of rice, with a ladleful of the spicy sauce and caramelized pork pieces over one half, seared bok choy or your choice of vegetables steamed or pan-seared on the other half, then everything topped with a fried egg or two.

Adapted from Best of the Bay Plow Cooking Class at SFCS

Chinese Breakfast Pork

5 from 1 vote

Print Pin Rate

Course: Breakfast, Brunch

Cuisine: Chinese

Keyword: San Francisco Cooking School, Plow Restaurant, Weekend brunch

Prep Time: 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour hour 25 minutes minutes

Marinating time: 1 hour hour

Total Time: 2 hours hours 30 minutes minutes

Servings: 4

Ingredients

For the pork:

• 3 pounds boneless pork butt cut into 1-½” cubes (no need to trim off fat unless really think or hard)
• 1 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1.5 tablespoons sesame oil
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons plus 1-2 tablespoons water divided
• 2-4 tablespoons olive oil or other neutral oil
• ¼ cup finely minced garlic
• ¼ cup grated fresh ginger
• ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons 6 tablespoons total Sambal Oelek chile sauce
• 1-1 ½ cups water not broth!

For the bok choy:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil or other neutral oil
• ½ pound baby bok choy

For assembly:

• 3 cups cooked brown jasmine rice
• 8 eggs cooked sunny side up
• cilantro sprigs for garnish
• additional Sambal Oelek as desired

Instructions

For the pork:

• Place the cubed pork in a large bowl. Pour the soy sauce and sesame oil over the cubes, toss to coat, then cover with a large plate or plastic wrap and let the meat marinate at room temperature for 1 hour (or marinate the meat in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours before starting).
• Just before the pork is finished marinating, make the caramel. In a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan, gently stir together the brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of water without sloshing onto the sides, then bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Continue cooking without stirring, until the sugar-water turns dark amber, another couple of minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and halt the cooking by carefully adding a tablespoon or two of cold water (caution: the sauce will bubble aggressively upon addition of the cold water). Whisk gently, then set aside.
• After the one-hour room marinade is complete, place a large, wide Dutch oven over medium-high heat. After a couple of minutes, add a tablespoon of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, use a slotted spoon to remove about one-third to one-half of the pork (depending on the size of your pan) from the marinade, letting any liquid drip back into the bowl (you’ll use it later), then place these pork cubes into the hot pan without crowding it. Wait a few minutes before moving the searing pork pieces, so the bottom side of the pork gains a deep brown color, then flip the pieces over and brown the tops, then repeat for the sides, so the pork cubes are fully browned on all sides. Set these browned pieces aside in a clean large bowl, then repeat with the remaining pieces. Depending on your pan size, this may take 2-4 batches, and up to 40 minutes. Be patient with this process, as it’s contributing a ton to the final flavor.
• Once you are finishing browning the last batch of pork cubes, reduce the heat to medium-low. You can leave those last cubes in the pan or take them out for the next two minutes, it doesn’t matter.
• Add the minced garlic to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic is quite fragrant, about one minute. Add the grated ginger and cook for another minute, still stirring frequently. Add all the browned cubes of pork back into the Dutch oven, together with any juices that collected in the bowl, the reserved marinade, the caramel sauce*, the Sambal Oelek, and enough water to not-quite-cover the pork pieces (for me this was 1 ⅓ cups). Stir everything to combine, then bring to a boil over high heat. As soon as the contents of the pot begin to boil, reduce the heat sufficiently to keep the liquid at a constant gentle simmer. Continue cooking for about 1 hour, or until the pork is tender.
• About 30-45 minutes into cooking, taste the sauce and adjust for seasoning if necessary. Depending on your preferences, add more soy sauce (for additional salt), chile sauce (for heat), or a little brown sugar (for sweetness).

For the bok choy:

• Just before the pork is finished, heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat. After a few minutes, add the oil, then add the bok choy and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3-4 minutes until it becomes browned and slightly softened. Season with a dash of salt and set aside.

For the assembly:

• If making rice specifically for this dish, start the brown rice at about the same time the pork+sauce begins to simmer, or start white rice about 30 minutes prior to serving.
• Start frying the eggs at the same time (if you have multiple large frying pans) as you fry the bok choy, otherwise fry the eggs after you’ve browned the bok choy.

To serve:

• Divide the rice between four deep bowls. Top each bowl of rice with about ½ cup (a generous ladleful) of the cubed pork and its rice sauce, followed by 2 of the fried eggs and a quarter of the bok choy. Garnish with cilantro (if desired) and serve immediately.

Notes

Making ahead: You can make the pork ahead of time, simply refrigerate for up to 4-5 days, then reheat before serving. The pork also freezes beautifully.