61 recipes. Page 2 of 3
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Despite the name, Gyoda furai is never deep-fried. This snack from Gyoda in Saitama is a loose flour batter spread into a 20 cm round on a lightly oiled pan, topped with long onion and thin pork, and pressed down again and again with a pot lid as it cooks. When brown spots appear on the batter it is brushed with Worcestershire-style sauce and eaten hot.
Three potatoes, cut big, simmer with pork in a gochujang broth. The starch they release as they cook thickens the broth without any stock or added starch. Stir only now and then, just to keep the bottom from catching; more than that and the potatoes break.
Squid bodies are packed with a filling of glass noodles, ground pork and the chopped tentacles, steamed, then left to cool a little before being cut into thick rounds. Each slice shows a white ring of squid around a dense mosaic of noodles, chives and carrot.
Pork marinated in fish sauce, sugar, and garlic and seared over high heat develops a caramelized brown edge while the inside stays juicy. In this southern Vietnamese bowl it goes, still warm, over chilled rice vermicelli and raw greens, and that hot-cold contrast is much of the pleasure. A sweet-sour dressing of lime juice and fish sauce ties meat, noodles, and vegetables together with no broth at all.
Rice paper rather than a wheat wrapper sets these southern Vietnamese rolls apart: it fries into a thin, blistered shell that shatters more sharply than a Chinese egg roll. Rolling tension matters, since a loose roll bursts in the oil and an overly tight one squeezes the pork and glass noodle filling into a hard core. In the south, families gather around Tet to roll them by the hundreds.
There is no sauce in this curry: minced pork is fried with spice paste until it breaks into dry, separate crumbles. The aroma and heat of this shortcut version differ from the original because it uses commercial Thai red curry paste in place of the southern Thai paste, which has its own mix including turmeric and pepper. The pork should end up with no liquid left at the bottom but not crisp like a snack. Finely shredded makrut lime leaves add a citrus lift against the spice.
Ground beef and pork seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil give this patty the sweet-salty taste of tteokgalbi, Korean grilled short-rib patties, inside a burger bun. The toasted bun gets mayonnaise and lettuce before the patty goes on.
Perilla leaves have a strong scent, so the pork and tofu filling is seasoned simply, with only soy sauce and black pepper. A thin layer goes inside each leaf, which is folded, fried, then cut in half again into single bites.
Jjageuli is not supposed to leave much broth behind. Gochujang seasoning is fried in rendered pork fat, thick-cut potatoes go in, and as they simmer they slump and crumble until only a shallow, thick sauce is left in the pot. It sits closer to a rice topping than a soup.
Cao lau belongs to Hoi An, where the noodles were traditionally made with water from an old Cham well and lye from the ash of trees on the nearby Cham Islands, giving them a dense chew; at home, thick rice noodles stand in. It is not a soup: only a few spoonfuls of the sticky soy and sugar pan glaze are poured over the noodles, so the bean sprouts, herbs and crumbled fried wonton skins keep their own textures.
Eggs beaten with fish sauce until foamy hit oil that is almost smoking and puff instantly, forming lacy, crisp edges around a thick, fluffy middle. Thai home cooks slide it straight onto jasmine rice for a meal, and it has little in common with a gently cooked Western omelet.
Once the pan is hot, the heat stays high until the end. Pork goes in first, then shrimp and squid, then the vegetables, roughly a minute apart, with no gap for chopping or drying anything, which is why everything is prepped and lined up beside the stove. There is no starch at the finish: oyster sauce and water boil for 2 minutes and leave only a thin coat.
Wrapped around a wooden skewer rather than served as a free-standing patty, this tteokgalbi mixture needs far more grip than the plated kind. A little starch and more than 3 minutes of kneading give it that, and skewers soaked in water for 10 minutes scorch less. Tteokbokki sauce or ketchup alongside makes it a street-stall snack.
A Gangwon province dish: buckwheat batter is cooked crepe-thin, rolled around a stir-fried filling of aged kimchi, tofu and pork, then crisped in the pan a second time. Buckwheat has no gluten, and the batter needs more than 10 minutes' rest before it can be spread thin without tearing. Unrinsed aged kimchi keeps its fermented sourness in the filling; rinsing it makes the filling milder.
Long-fermented kimchi (mugeunji) is sour enough that it gets fried in rendered pork fat before the water is added, which takes the harsh edge off its acidity. With plain water as the broth, all the flavor has to come from the kimchi and pork over at least 20 minutes at a medium simmer. Cut that short and the broth stays thin.
Spread across a very hot pan and left alone for a moment, the noodles pick up crisp, browned patches while the centers stay chewy, and that contrast defines chow mein. It depends on dry ingredients: noodles boiled just short of tender and cooled, bean sprouts shaken free of water, and vegetables pulled before they weep. A thin coat of sesame oil on the drained noodles stops them from fusing into a clump as they cool. High heat from start to finish keeps liquid from pooling in the pan, where it would steam the noodles instead of frying them. Oyster sauce and soy give the strands a glossy, salty coating.
Four fist-sized pork meatballs sit on a bed of napa cabbage and braise slowly in a light soy broth, staying moist and soft right to the surface instead of carrying a fried crust. The cabbage keeps the pork off the hot pot bottom and turns silky as it soaks up the meat juices.
Boiled pork gets chopped fine and fried hard in butter until the edges crisp, then calamansi juice (from a small sour Philippine citrus) and mayonnaise are stirred in at the end. Any water left on the pork makes it steam before it browns, and without crisp edges this Filipino bar snack loses its point.
Fresh shiitake caps are stuffed with pork seasoned with soy sauce, scallion and garlic, mounded slightly, then coated in egg and fried. The easily skipped step is a very light dusting of flour inside each cap, which acts like glue between mushroom and meat.
From the Cambodian immigrant communities of Phnom Penh, this clear rice noodle soup crossed into southern Vietnam and settled into Saigon's street food. Fish sauce and a little sugar give the pork broth its savory-sweet southern balance, and this recipe starts from ready-made pork bone stock rather than simmering bones. Once seasoned, the broth drops to low heat so it stays clear and fragrant. Ground pork fried with garlic until dry and crumbly sits on top as a contrast to the silky broth. The shrimp spend only about a minute in boiling water and come out as soon as they turn pink, which keeps them tender.
These slim, finger-length Filipino pork spring rolls turn up at birthday parties, holiday tables, and town fiestas. They fry twice, first in lower heat and then in hotter oil, and that second round keeps them crisp long after they cool. Whole trays can be fried before a party and stacked up to wait.
The eggplant is fried and set aside first, then returned to the sauce at the end, which keeps the pieces whole. The sauce starts from the spicy oil released as ground pork and doubanjiang (chili bean paste) fry together, and the sourness is adjusted at the very end with a little vinegar at a time.
Instead of ladling sauce over a bowl of noodles, platter jjajang tosses the cooked noodles right into the pan with the black bean sauce and serves everything on one large plate to share. Squid and shrimp join the pork and cook only until the squid turns opaque and the shrimp curl pink.
Two kinds of heat meet here: the chili burn of doubanjiang, a fermented chili bean paste, and the tingling numbness of ground Sichuan pepper. That numbing quality, called ma in Sichuan cooking, is what separates mapo tofu from other spicy braises. Soft tofu takes on the rusty-red sauce at its edges while the center stays silken, and spooned over steamed rice, the thick sauce runs down between the grains.