Double-Cooked Pork in Dark Soya Sauce

Ingredients

• 350g Pork belly (cut into cubes)
• 2 pcs Star anise
• 1 Cinnamon stick
• 4 tbsp Dark-soya sauce (make sure it's the really thick type of dark soya sauce sold in Malaysian grocery stores, not the watery dark soya sauce found in Hong Kong)
• 2 tbsp Light soya sauce
• 1 tbsp Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Pepper
• 1 tsp Salt
• 2 tsp Five-spice powder
• 3 cloves Garlic
• 2 tsp Cooking oil
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 Eggs (hard-boiled, peeled) - optional

Method

1. Rub salt and five-spice powder onto the pork belly cubes. Then add dark soya sauce, light soya sauce, sugar and pepper and mix well. Leave to marinate for at least a few hours or overnight.
   


2. In a pot, brown garlic in cooking oil. Then add star anise and cinnamon stick. Fry until fragrant.
3. Add in the marinated pork belly and fry until the meat is partially cooked. Then add water.
4. Add dark soya sauce, light soya sauce, sugar and pepper as needed to suit taste.
   


5. Leave to simmer on low heat for about 20-30 minutes or until the meat is cooked.
6. Transfer the meat and sauce into slow cooker and leave to cook for approx. 6 hours.
7. Add the hard-boiled eggs into slow cooker just half an hour before serving. (Cooking for too long will make the eggs too hard to eat)
   

* Serves 4

Tips

1. The tenderness of the meat is very much dependant on the cooking time. Cooking the meat for too long/not long enough will make the meat tough.
2. Cheat trick: If you're too busy to marinate the meat overnight nor cook the meat for 6 hours, try rubbing the meat with 1.5 tbsp cornflour which acts as a natural tenderizer for meat. Then add all the other marinade ingredients and marinate for at least half an hour before cooking; the longer the better. Cook meat for about an hour or more and serve.