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Monday, May 08, 2006

Ginger Sauteed Pork

It was a busy partying weekend for us. Friday was Cinco de Mayo. Our friends Justin and Cherish that used to teach English in Japan invited us over for dinner. Originally we were thinking of going out to some Mexican bar or restaurant, but Justin insisted that he cook authentic Mexican food for all of us. He has no Mexican blood in his genes, but I have to admit that he makes really good Mexican dish. My wife doesn't like avocados, but somehow she likes the guacamole Justin makes. That should tell you something. We enjoyed the dinner and Mexican beers.

On Saturday, we invited all our friends to Howl At the Moon, which is a cool dueling piano bar. We went there about a month ago and won a free party for 100 people. I heard everyone that fills out the form wins, and sure enough both my wife and I won. Since we had just recently moved back to Seattle, we still don't know that many people, but thanks to our friends' friends, I think we had about 30 to 40 people. For the party, they served free BBQ pork sandwiches and garlic mashed potatoes.

Today I will introduce ginger sautéed pork. This might sound odd, considering that I have this recipe site, but I usually don't like to look at recipes when I cook. Most of the Japanese food that I make, I have learned to make from trial and error (and believe me, I've made plenty of errors). I would have to say that I had the most trouble with ginger sautéed pork [buta no shoga yaki] by far. I've tried numerous different ways; soaking the meat in the sauce overnight, covering meat in flour, and stirfrying in wok, but I just couldn't get the pork to be tender. Recently I finally managed to come up with what I consider to be the best way to cook ginger sautéed pork.

IN JAPANESE: Buta no shoga yaki
CATEGORY: Meat
COOKING METHOD: Stirfry
DIFFICULTY: Medium
SERVES: 2 people
LENGTH OF TIME: 10 min

INGREDIENTS:
5-8 thin sliced pork
1 half inch piece of ginger (see TIP: Ginger)
2 TBsp soy sauce
2 TBsp mirin
1 TBsp sake
1 TBsp water

HOW TO:
Add soy sauce, mirin, sake, water in a bowl, and shred a piece of ginger to the mix.

Mix thin sliced pork into the bowl and marinate until the meat is covered in sauce.

Pour the meat and sauce into a flat bottom pan (don't need any oil), and then turn on the heat to low (don't preheat the pan!). You would want to place the meat flat like shown on the picture. Since this is being cooked in low heat, it will probably take about 5 minutes before the pork starts to cook.

When 90% of the meat is cooked (turned brown as opposed to red), flip the meat over to completely cook the raw parts.

Serve next to some shredded cabbage (pour the sauce over the cabbage as a dressing).

6 comments:

Tako said...

Man, you've been updating this pretty often huh. I'm thinking about starting to cook again since I get to come home fairly early these days...

Anonymous said...

I love to it ginger pork..but i dont know how to cook.

Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

I mean,i love to eat...ginger pork!

trav said...

Really Great. Good for School Projects
thanks

Carina said...

Great recipe! I've cooked this several times and it is always a hit. I like that no oil is used to cook the pork.

sokeleng said...

The taste of the ginger pork is awesome! My husband and kids like this dish very much. My husband say this ginger dish solve his indigestion problem. I guess he is right, because ginger paste is full of digestive enzyme. On top of your recipe, I added well toasted sesame seed. It gives the pork slightly nutty flavour it is very appetising. The shortcoming of this dish is it was slightly saltiest (I forgotten to put in sugar!). If you intend to grate large amount of ginger, I reckon this http://www.bakingfrenzy.com/japanese-ginger-grater-p-385.html ( ginger grater )is quite useful, due to the grating surfave won’t become blunt easily. Anyway thanks for all the hard works and time to list out the recipes.