Night market
- Taipei
- Daily 17:00–23:30
Known forOyster Omelet · Braised Pork Rice · Douhua (Tofu Pudding)
In the kitchen
How it’s prepared
The whole point is to cook the fat, skin and lean of the pork until it goes soft and silky. The Ministry of Education's Taiwanese Hokkien dictionary describes the sauce this way: minced shallots fried until fragrant, ground pork stirred in, then simmered with soy sauce, five-spice powder, rock sugar, pepper and rice wine and seasoned with salt at the end. In practice recipes vary by shop, with either ground pork or hand-chopped pork belly (the dictionary's entry for 肉燥飯 describes chopped or minced pork belly). Collagen from the skin thickens the sauce naturally, which is why many shops keep the skin and fat in. Some add dried shiitake, or braise eggs in the same pot.
The sauce goes over freshly cooked rice so the grains soak it up. A slice of pickled radish, often the yellow kind, usually sits alongside to cut the richness, and bowls are often rounded out with a braised egg, blanched greens or a small soup. Bowls come in small and large; a small one is closer to a snack and is often eaten with a side dish.
Origins
History and origins
Nobody can say with certainty who first spooned minced pork over rice, or when. Michelin's Taiwan guide describes the dish as an expression of Taiwanese thrift: in leaner times, families who could not afford big cuts of pork stretched offcuts and bits of pork skin from the butcher's stall into a sauce with soy sauce, five-spice and fried shallots. It is a plausible story, but there is little documentation behind it, so hold it loosely.
The name is where things get tangled. According to the Ministry of Education's Hokkien dictionary, the minced-pork-sauce-on-rice that central and northern Taiwan call 滷肉飯 (lóo-bah-pn̄g) is usually called 肉燥飯 (bah-sò-pn̄g) in the south, where 滷肉飯 is also commonly used for a bowl topped with a whole piece of braised pork belly — what the north calls 焢肉飯 (the dictionary writes it 炕肉飯, khòng-bah-pn̄g). The spelling has even been political: in 2011 the Taiwan edition of Michelin's Green Guide described the dish as a staple of Shandong cuisine, and 魯, a common way of writing the first character, is also an alternate name for Shandong. Taipei's city government objected, handed out more than 1,000 free bowls at the end of August that year, and urged everyone to write 滷, 'to braise', instead.
