Tau Yu Bak (Braised Pork Belly in Soy Sauce) 豆油肉
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True taste of home-cooked food: “Tau Yu Bak” (豆油肉)
I grew up eating this dish so this is true taste of home-cooked food to me. Deliciously savoury, this dish goes very well with rice or steamed buns (for kong bak bao 扣肉包). Every family has a different way of cooking this dish. My family’s version is no fuss – just one type of soy sauce (dark) and no need to grind garlic (or shallots). The recipe is also very forgiving and flexible so you can always “rescue” it if something goes wrong. Do not overdose on the spices (like star anise, cinnamon) because a little goes a long way. If you like to know what the spices such as star anise, cloves and cinnamon look like, check out the photo (with additional cooking tips) on page 2.
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I re-created the dish from memory of the taste and I let my mum taste test the dish. Her verdict – my tau yu bak was good, and she liked that the sauce is just the right amount (if too much, the stew is diluted; too little will result in insufficient gravy for the rice & meat).
Braised Pork Belly in Soy Sauce (Tau Yu Bak) Recipe
- Serves: 4
- Prep: 10 mins
- Cook: 60 mins
Constantly check that the braising sauce is not dried out during the simmering. You will need to add water (a little at a time) when the stew is drying out. Get more cooking tips on page 2 of the recipe.
Ingredients
- 8 dried Chinese mushrooms
- 4 eggs
- 1-2 tbsp cooking oil
- 500 grams pork belly
- 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 litre water
- 1 cinnamon stick (桂皮)
- 1 star anise (八角)
- 4 cloves (丁香)
- 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder (五香粉)
- 1.5 bulbs garlic separated into individual cloves (no need to peel)
- dashes of white pepper powder to taste
- spring onions or coriander garnishing
Instructions
- Soak dry mushrooms in small bowl of hot water until puffy, then drain water. Squeeze out the water from mushrooms and trim away stems. Set aside the mushroom caps.
- Prepare 80% cooked hard boiled eggs. To do that, place eggs in saucepan of cold water (enough water to cover eggs one layer). Bring to a boil for about 2 minutes, turn off the stove and cover with lid for about 7 minutes (for 100% hard boiled eggs, it’s about 10 minutes). Rinse the eggs with cold water until eggs are cooled. Peel when cool enough to handle. Set aside.
- Heat oil in casserole (wok, claypot or deep pot). Brown pork belly on both sides on medium heat. Add 1.5 tbsp dark soy sauce on both sides of browned pork belly.
- Add the rest of the ingredients except eggs, tau kwa and spring onions/coriander. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer (with lid partially closed) for an hour, or until the meat is tender.
- During the last 10 minutes of simmering, add eggs and tau kwa. To serve, slice pork belly to smaller, bite-sized pieces. Serve with rice or steamed buns. Garnish with spring onions or coriander.
Get more photos and cooking notes for Braised Pork Belly (Tau Yu Bak) on page 2.
Pages: 1 2
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{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
What a coincidence! I just finished cooking this for lunch! I agree it’s a very easy dish to prepare. Mine is even fuss-free! I don’t use all the spices except for one petal of star aniseed and lots of garlic. My hubby doesn’t like the spice flavour. My recipe is my MIL’s, so naturally I have to use hers for her son. :)
yes, not everyone likes the spices. My mum always add star anise, cinnamon etc to hers so I’m really familiar with this taste :)
My version is a simple one, without star anise and cinnamon, hehe…
omgggg i could eat many bowls of rice with this dish! :D
Just curious…are you a Hokkien? (I always thought you were a Cantonese. :-))) )
I ate very often the “tau yu bak” when I still lived in my mum’s house. We call it “豆油肉“. I was the one who usually finished up all the black mushrooms and tendons.
Angie
Yes I am. Oh I think you’re right, it’s 豆油肉 not 酱油肉… think I translated wrongly. My mandarin cannot make it T_T gonna edit the post, thanks a lot
Oh my God! These are my favorite things put together!
That sounds very similar to our 滷水 foods. The name 豆油肉 is new to me, but I think they are equally delicious. I enjoy it very much with rice.
Oh my, my hubs is gonna love you for this :-) This is his absolute favourite dish. I must try out your recipe!
Hope you and your hub will enjoy this dish :)
I love this dish, so yummy going with rice :)
This is definitely one of our family’s staple!
Seeing this making me wanna cook this again (we just had it last week actually!). Will be buying pork belly from the market tomorrow ;)
OMG! How i wish i could have this for 2morrow night dinner.. It’s just so nice and tasty^^
i love this dish! I’ve never tried cooking this before hehe might have to try one day soon :)
I love pork, but have never eaten it this way. Looks very interesting and full of flavour. Next on my list….
Love this dish… especially with rice. The last time I ate this was around 2 years ago…!
This is my all time favourite dish! I wish I could have some right now! It always put a smile on my face… yummy!!
I can just eat rice with the gravy :)
One thing I remember and miss from still eating meat when I was little is the wonderful soups and braises. This looks very yummy.
This is delicious! I remember eating this when we were young. We can eat a lot of rice with just the sauce alone. I love the eggs too, very flavourful.
Hi Wiffy, thank you so much for sharing this dish. I have been searching and waiting for someone to post this tau yu bak which I have been craving for a while but dont know how to cook. I tried your steam tofu with minced meat and wolfberry last week end. I tried a few of your dishes and they were very nice and easy to prepare. Shall drop by here more often to learn from you. thank you once again.
thanks for trying out the dishes. Glad they turn out well :) And hope you’ll like this dish when you try it also :)
Looks yummy. Will try this out. Thanks for sharing.
Looks gorgeous wiffy =) I have to do a step by step comparison with the recipe I use to see what’s the difference and try yours out sometime! I like mine but I always feel there’s just a little something missing… I love my mum-in-law’s but she doesn’t have a fixed recipe!
This is my family favourite too. Though we don’t really add the satr anise and cinnamon but I think the flavour is much richer when you add them. Love to eat the egg and the gravy.
I love this! Now I have to cook some really soon!
The sauce must be so flavorful. Looks delicious with the eggs!
awwww i really miss this. My mother used to make this often. funny it’s the same recipe, but in place of rock sugar, she uses the red dates sweet sauce that also gives it the colouring. :)
that’s interesting! I’ve never heard of red dates sweet sauce but I’ll like it. Would love to try this version one day :)
Great dish! Run well with rice … no need to add other dish. So hungry now :)
I like tau yu bak with sambal belacan, but what I love most is the fatty pork that melts in the mouth.
the fatty part is definitely my favourite too :p
oh yes! this is definitely my fav dish too! and no..don’t be guilt trip by the fats .. they might do just good for you.. in fact it’s probably rice we need to go easy on instead ;)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY
Wiffy, this looks absolutely delicious. Love the flavours and colour of this dish. I too made some braised pork belly a couple of weeks back .. yum! Love this sauce with steaming white rice.
This has to be the best tao yu bak I have ever seen! I can imagine how many bowl of rice I will need.
This is a must have dish in our family during festive season. So Hokkien :) I actually like eating this the second day as I think it taste much better.
yes! somehow it tastes better the second day. I like to cook extras, keep leftovers in a claypot, reheat the next day. It’s really yummy :)
This looks delicious! I bought some pork belly in one slab today (1.3kg) but it has the skin on. Do you remove the skin? And how big should each piece of meat be if I cut it up (I will only use 500gm and save the rest for twice cooked pork belly – yum!) Last question, is the dark soy just plain dark soy or a sweet dark soy like kecap manis?
Thanks!
Can’t wait to make it,
Shell
Hi Shell, I left the skin (and fats) on. To me, it’s the good part… makes the stew very flavourful and I know it’s unhealthy but after stewing, the fatty part just melts in your mouth, very delicious to me.
regarding the size of each piece of meat, it’s up to you. For mine, each stab of meat (when I begin cooking) is 12cm. After stewing, I cut them to the sizes I want (either thinly sliced or 5cm length).
and I use normal dark soy sauce, not kecap manis. Happy cooking!
my mum makes this all the time too but she doesn’t use so many spice and she uses kicap manis / thick soy sauce so the sauce is thicker.. Maybe it’s a different version of tau yu bak haha ..
That sounds good! yes I think every family has its own recipe for tau yu bak :)
I tried this, had the pork simmering for an hour an a half. But how do you get the pork meltingly soft and tender?
The longer you cook, the more tender it is. Maybe you can even transfer to a slow cooker and simmer away on low heat all day long.
I do only used 八角 without 丁香,桂皮,五香粉。I also added dry octopus(尤鱼干). The soup has a natural taste of the 海鲜。
The 海鲜 version with the 尤鱼干 sounds interesting & unique. Like the sound of it :)
Cooked the tau yu bak dish today and love it. My whole kitchen was filled with the aromatic smell during the simmering process. Thanks for sharing.
yes, my kind of aromatherapy too :)
I would love to try this Singaporean dish, nice that I have all spices ready at home.
Just curious, before serving, do you take out the garlic or do you leave as is with skin? I want to give this a try.
I’m sorry for missing this. If you don’t intend to eat the garlic cloves, you don’t have to peel them. But my mum loves to eat them, so I do peel the garlic :)
Thanks for sharing this recipe! I chanced upon your blog and tried it yesterday. It was not too difficult and the end product looked and tasted great :) I skipped most of the spices and only used the star anise. I also added in carrots (I love them and had some leftover from making soup) and it added a tinge of sweetness to the simmering goodness!
sounds good to me! thanks :)
Hello! I have tried your 豆油肉 , but it isn’t salty at all. I used Tiger Brand Dark
soy souce(Top quality). What brand of dark soy souce did you use ?
Thanks. Happy New Year.
I used Tai Hua superior dark soy sauce. Adjust the soy to your liking because everyone has different preferences. Happy New Year!
Looks very appetizing!!! I also make something similar to this only difference is I use pork leg and no cinnamon stick. Same melt in your mouth goodness! Will cook this with pork belly for CNY. =)
Hi,
This is a great recipe! One of my favourites! Just wondering though about the dark soya sauce. Do you use Sweet Dark Soya Sauce (super thick kind) or just Dark Soya Sauce (one i have isn;t really salty, just creates dark colour, which i use when i;m making bah kut teh! lol) ???
Thanks!
Whoops.. just saw posts below about the dark soya sauce! Thanks anyways, can’t wait to try it tomorrow night!
yep, just normal dark soy sauce. I use that in all my recipes. have fun cooking and hope you like the results!
i just tried your recipie yesterday night and its awesome! thanks!
Just tried this recipe. 3 adults and one 3-year old gobbled up everything. Meat was so tender and not 腻. Added 4 more sugar cubes also.
One thing i did different was the simmering for one hour. Gravy was still too liquid for family’s liking. So after 50 mins of simmering, added Step 7 stuff and then brought it to a boil for the last 10 mins to reduce to a thicker gravy. Gravy was great with rice.
Noobcook is my goto website when i miss Singapore food since I’m based in Beijing for so long now. Another Singaporean friend of mine in Beijing also tried the Yu Sheng (CNY Raw Fish Salad) after i introduced to him the website.
Thank you for reconnecting us Singaporeans abroad to our childhood foods.
yum, this is one of my favourites…easy too! just chuck everything in and it’s done! I did a french braised pork, which is basically the same process but with different flavourings.
Amazing how essentially the same dish can be present in two different cultures and yet be totally distinct.
Hi
Saw this recipe and looks great.
I want to try it and in your tips, you mentioned using rock sugar yet I don’t see it in the list of ingredients above. Do you have a suggestions of how much sugar to add?
Thank you
Alex
I just tried making this dish today after reading your post. It was good! Thank you for sharing the recipe. :) I used a leaner cut (fresh ham) instead of pork belly and left everything in the crockpot to cook while I went to work. I forgot about rock sugar as I was in a hurry but all turned out well. The meat was very tender.
Great looking recipe! I’m planning to make this for Chinese New year and wondering if anyone knows if I can use CrockPot or not. If so, what is the temperature setting an cooking time. Thank you.
what is tau kwa?
fried bean curd
Hi Wiffy, thinking of trying this dish for dinner tonight. Can I just check with you, I cant seem to find the nice tau pok that we eat usually from the supermarts. The ones they sell seem to be smaller and harder. Are they good for this dish too?