Notes on Food

I tried this grilled pork belly dish for the first time at Honey Pig in Annandale, VA. When I went grocery shopping with my mom this weekend at H Mart, I saw already-sliced pork belly and decided to give it a go. Though I know the traditional way to prepare and eat this dish requires that the meat is unseasoned and given the good old lettuce wrap treatment, I wanted something spicy, sweet, and savory.

With the 7 lb container of gochujang that I still have from one of my mom’s impulse buys, I threw together a bunch of traditional Asian ingredients for a marinade and hoped for the best. Surprisingly, the pork belly turned out just as I had hoped. Here’s the gist:

3 heaping tablespoons of gochujang, Korean red pepper paste
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 green chili pepper, diced
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1.5 teaspoons salt
as much water as you need

Whisk all those ingredients together while pouring in water little by little, until you have a thick liquid. The marinade should not be pasty but able to soak into the pork belly.

Marinade 1.5 – 2 lbs of pork belly in the red marinade for at least an hour, preferably several. When done marinating, grill or pan-sear, flipping on to the other side after about 30 seconds and after 30 seconds on the other side, take off the heat. Don’t move them too much while they’re cooking. Also, make sure you don’t grill them for too long otherwise they’ll dry out and I hate nothing more than dry pork.

You can either wrap this in lettuce with white rice and Korean bean paste, or do as our family did and simply eat it over white rice with sauteed greens. YUM.