Minced pork rice is the crown jewel of Taiwanese comfort food—don’t fight me on this one. I mean, it’s slow-simmered savory pork ladled atop a bed of steamed rice. Those who would pass that up must be few and far between. Growing up, I took home-cooked meals for granted, including my mom’s minced pork with tofu braised in the luscious meaty liquor. But living in an apartment a couple hundred miles from home has forced me to navigate the uncharted territory of cooking on my own. Calls with my mom are now 90% vocal instruction on how to sauté bok choy and cut kabocha with a butcher’s knife.
I’m wholly convinced that almost all—if not all—Asian parents are self-taught Iron Chefs who refuse any culinary methodology that isn’t just cooking by eye, and my mom is one of them. That makes transcribing a family recipe infinitely harder, but multiple rounds of trial and error have culminated in my best attempt at replicating this childhood favorite. Hope you’re proud of me, Mom.
Minced Pork Sauce With Tofu
Ingredients
Instructions
Make a slit on the side of the tofu box wrapper and drain water. Cut tofu into bite-size cubes and set aside for later.
Heat cooking oil in a pot and add ground pork, breaking up the pieces as they cook.
After pork is halfway cooked, add cooking wine and soy sauce. Continue stirring to ensure even cooking.
Once pork is fully cooked, add brown sugar, five spice powder, and fried shallot. Cook pork mixture for another minute to incorporate ingredients.
Add 7 tablespoons water to submerge pork and simmer on medium heat for 5 minutes.
Add tofu, hard-boiled eggs (optional), and additional soy sauce to taste. Cook meat sauce for 20 minutes or until tofu and eggs have absorbed flavor.
Serve over a base of short-grain white rice (or other carb of choice—brown rice, wheat noodles, you name it) and enjoy.
This low-effort recipe is easy enough for any college kitchen novice to follow. Using ground pork reduces the prep time to virtually zero, so you can get back on that Course Capture catch-up grind as your minced meat simmers away on the stovetop.
Sure, this ground pork rendition might seem like a far cry from the traditional hand-minced versions to minced pork rice purists, but it’s a mean meat sauce in its own right. And really, who’s got the time to dice a whole hunk of pork neck by hand when there are essays to write and exams to cram for? Try your hand at making this Taiwanese-inspired dish; who knows—it might just be what you need to jumpstart your journey to becoming a master at working a wok.
Happy cooking, my friends.