History

I mean it is funny reading English wikipedia. I didn't realise that 红烧肉 was specifically a Hunanese specialty because of Mao.

My attempts

I cooked 红烧肉 this weekend for the first time. It was pretty easy, just salted the pork for about 30 minutes before blanching it with ginger and shallots. Saving the blanching liquid, searing the pork in oil and sugar, and then finishing in a boil with the original blanching liquid along with dark soy sauce, soy sauce and star anise. Serve with rice.

The main issue I made is that searing took a lot more effort than I thought it would because I used a wok, and didn't pat the meat dry before searing, so the hot oil mixed with the water and exploded occassionally and dangerously, and I got scared.

Otherwise the primary improvements would be cutting up and boiling potatoes in the final boil, and also serving with fresh spring onions (probably). I could also add carrot, as there is a very beef stroganoff flavour/vibe in this dish.

Otherwise, I inadvertently added the correct amount of dark soy sauce and normal soy sauce, so it wasn't too salty. I should definitely this time try and record how much... but its also variable as the amount of meat will go up by 60% for the next cook (from 500g to 800g).

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Attempt 2:

I brined the meat for several (3-4) hours this time (kicking it off right after the first attempt):

I added 1% salt to the pork (about 8 grams) and just added water until covered. So not really a 1% brine.

I dried the meat between blanching and searing, and used shaoxing wine to deglaze the pan and added a lot of potatoes.

However, the searing was still ridiculous - I used a steel pan (ditched the wok for this one) and the oil just shot around like crazy.

Lastly for this one I added fresh shallots at the end after cooking.

The primary thing that I forgot to do was that I chopped the spring onions far too fine for the blanching step. This made them a massive pain to remove from the meat when it came time to sear.