Braised Pork in Dark Soya Sauce (Tau You Bah)

Updated on 17/09/10 with fotos of Tau You Bah cooked using fatty pork

I have been cooking pork for 2 days in a row. This is quite rare, cos I have always preferred cooking chicken to pork. That's because I have more chicken recipes than pork recipes, hahaha. I often have to crack my head on how to cook pork. But I have a good recipe on hand today. Something I wanted to try for some time. Not sweet and sour pork nor hainanese pork chop, I don't like to dirty my kitchen today....but braised pork in dark soya sauce, yeah! This is what we hokkiens call "tau-you-bah", but I didn't add enough water so the gravy was a bit too dry. And I used lean pork, so it was not oily enough either. I thought it tasted a bit different from the regular "tau-you-bah" recipe. Maybe this is the peranakan/straits chinese style of braising pork since the author of the cookbook is well-known for her peranakan recipes. Still it is a good dish, everything was finished and we wished we had more rice to go with the braised pork. :)

[17/09/10: I cooked the same dish using fatty pork with lots of fats oozing and the verdict was much much better than lean pork. The taste was very close to my mum's version of tau you bah.]

 

The recipe I copied was also accompanied by a recipe for buns. Buns for braised pork, yummy yummy! Nothing beats eating "tau-you-bah" with buns. "Kong-bah-bao" is what we call these buns. But it takes too much time and effort and I don't have time, maybe I will make the buns to go along with the braised pork another day. :)

Recipe adapted from The Best of Singapore Cooking by Mrs Leong Yee Soo.

INGREDIENTS (for 3 persons)

Ingred A

1 tbsp dark soya sauce

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp chinese 5-spice powder

Ingred B

2 cloves garlic, pounded

4 shallots, pounded

3 segments of star anise 

(or 1/2 tsp star anise powder)

1 tbsp sugar

Ingred C

1 tbsp dark soya sauce

1/2 tsp salt

Rest of ingredients

500g pork, with skin and some fats

220ml water

METHOD

1. Marinate whole piece of pork with ingredients A for at least 30 min.

2. Heat 2 tbsp oil in wok, then fry ingredients B til light brown.

3. Reduce heat to moderate, add marinated pork and cook til brown on all sides. Add ingredients C and half of the water. Cover and cook for 10 min.

4. Remove lid, turn pork over and continue boiling gently until sauce is thick. 

5. Add rest of the water and bring to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent sauce from sticking to bottom of the wok.

6. Remove meat and sauce to a heavy-bottom saucepan. Cover and let simmer til meat is tender, approx 1 hour. Add a little water if sauce thickens before meat is tender. Leave to cool. Slice pork and add hot sauce. Serve hot with steamed rice.

Note: The original recipe used 2 tbsp dark soya sauce, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp msg under ingredients C for 900g pork. I halved the dark soya sauce and salt and omitted the msg, for obvious reasons.