Pork Belly and Yu Choy Stir Fry
Easy to make, pork belly and Yu choy stir-fry is a lovely, different way to cook dark green vegetables. It makes an ideal side dish for a quick meal.
- 100 g pork belly
- 200 g Yu Choy
- ½ thumb (ginger)
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp. cooking oil
- 1 tbsp. light soy sauce
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. sesame oil
- ¼ cup water
- Cut ginger and garlic into slices. Remove the rinds of the pork belly and cut into thin slices.
- Peel the old skin of the Yu Choy and then break them into halves.
- Add a small amount of oil to the wok, and fry for around 3-4 minutes over medium heat until the pork belly is well seared. This helps to release some fat oil. Transfer the pork belly cube out
- Add garlic, ginger, as well as the You Choy. Fry over high fire. Since we don't blanch the vegetable, add some water and cover with a lid and cook for half minute.
- Season with salt, sugar, light soy sauce and lastly some sesame oil. Mix well and serve hot.
When I was a child, we celebrated the New Year with the year-end pig. Since we didn’t have a fridge at the time, Mom rendered all the pork fat into lard for long-term storage, usually for half the year. The addition to that process was a childhood comfort for me- the pork cracklings. Sometimes we mixed it with sugar or salt and ate it directly. We stored the leftovers carefully and later used them in stir-fried napa cabbage or to enrich soups. Pork cracklings and cabbage are a super famous dish in Chinese everyday cooking. Decades have passed, and our lives have changed a lot. As lard faded from our modern kitchens, cracklings are hard to find.
A common, standard Chinese green vegetable stir-fry is cooked with minced garlic, like our bok choy and garlic stir-fry. But if you want extra depth, adding lard or pork crackling is the top recommendation. Today, we’ll use seared pork belly instead of pork crackling. Those pork belly pieces add textural contrast to the Yu Choy and release liquid lard. The animal fat can make the Yu Choy softer and deeply savory.
The ingredient list is short as usual. I love to cook big flavors with simple ingredients. To make this pork belly and Yu Choy stir-fry, you will need:
Add a small amount of oil to the wok, and fry for about 3-4 minutes over medium heat until the pork belly is well seared. This helps release some fat oil. Transfer the pork belly cube out. Remember to clean the wok.
