Sous Vide Pork Belly Adobo
Speed - 95%
Simplicity - 100%
Tastiness - 100%
98%
Yummy!
The pork came out really tender and succulent. The coconut cream really took this variation of an adobo to a whole new level.
Ingredients
- 1 Kilogram Pork Belly cut into cubes
- 1/4 Cup Coconut Vinegar
- 1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1 Cup Coconut Cream
- 1 Tablespoon Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns
- 8 Cloves garlic crushed
- 3 Pieces Bay Leaf
- 4-6 Pieces Chili
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Season the pork with salt.
- Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a pan and sear the pork until brown.
- Set the pork aside. In the same pan, sautee the garlic and peppercorns briefly.
- Add the soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaf, chili, sugar, and coconut cream. Simmer to reduce to about a quarter.
- Put the pork in a sous vide bag together with the sauce.
- Cook sous vide for 24 hours at 158F.
There are just some dishes that are too good in all their simplicity, and doing them wrong is just quite close to impossible. Adobo definitely belongs to that list hence its well-deserved popularity.
Though countless recipe variations may be found, you'll notice that staple ingredients come down to a protein, some vinegar, and garlic. The dish basically is a simple stew.
So how do we improve on a dish that has been a proven favorite through time? Honestly, on the ingredient side, not much really. The well-balanced flavors of an adobo are just perfect as they have long been.
Taking the dish to a higher level would mean cooking it to perfection. At present, the precise cooking that sous vide brings allows us to create the perfect adobo each and every single time.
Let us begin.
Start by giving the pork belly cuts a light seasoning of salt. By the way, go use any cut of pork that you like, any other meat actually, even poultry. Using pork belly though just gives this dish so much decadence that you certainly won't get from using any other lean cut of meat. Those gorgeous layers of meat and fat just make so much difference.
Color = flavor. Give those cuts a good brown crust in a lightly oiled pan. Use just enough oil to get the searing process started. That fat from the pork will be rendered out in no time and you'll most likely get more than you need.
Set the browned pieces of pork aside, taking off some of the excess fat in the pan too, and lightly roast the crushed garlic pieces and peppercorns. We don't want any color on our garlic as it could turn bitter.
Next would be to add all the remaining ingredients to the pan – vinegar, soy sauce, coconut cream, sugar, chili, and bay leaves.
An adobo could only be as good as the vinegar that you put into it. Coconut vinegar has become my favorite, but do feel free to experiment. Try using rice vinegar, white wine, balsamic – you might just end up with a recipe you'd like better than this.
You may totally omit the coconut cream if you wish for whatever reason and still get excellent results. However, your dish just would lack that extra richness that coconut cream gives.
Bring the contents of your pan to a simmer and allow it to reduce by about a quarter of its volume to get all those flavors to intensify. We're making up for the fact that evaporation, that would typically happen on the stovetop, won't be happening with sous vide cooking.
Get everything into a sous vide bag – pork and sauce.
Set the pork to cook at 158F for 24-36 hours. Too much time? Yes, I know. You'll be rewarded for your patience believe me. Get an immersion circulator you can monitor on your smartphone so you can keep track everything while you're out of the kitchen.
The pork will be good to serve out of the bag.
It really amazed me how these pork belly cubes retained much of their size and structure, given how fork-tender they really are. Achieving these results through more conventional cooking methods is really impossible.
Ingredients
- 1 Kilogram Pork Belly cut into cubes
- 1/4 Cup Coconut Vinegar
- 1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1 Cup Coconut Cream
- 1 Tablespoon Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns
- 8 Cloves garlic crushed
- 3 Pieces Bay Leaf
- 4-6 Pieces Chili
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Season the pork with salt.
- Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a pan and sear the pork until brown.
- Set the pork aside. In the same pan, sautee the garlic and peppercorns briefly.
- Add the soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaf, chili, sugar, and coconut cream. Simmer to reduce to about a quarter.
- Put the pork in a sous vide bag together with the sauce.
- Cook sous vide for 24 hours at 158F.
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