Carry Laws
Often, when I’m thinking about what I’m going to make for dinner, I’m starting off with the idea of a rice bowl, because I always have rice in my pantry. So I thought why not share with you guys some of my favorite easy rice bowl ideas. I’Ve got sticky chass your pork fried rice, bowl, sticky, barbecue, pork, rice, bowl Taiwanese braised, pork and rice, and this one is a favorite Vietnamese, lemongrass chicken rice. Oh we’ve got a few cheats here, we’re going to use some store-bought Char seal charcoal sauce. I like to do the pork steaks rather than doing a full baked, like you know, tassial pork, because it’s just a bit easier for weeknight, I’m going to be using um.
Sometimes they’re called like pork, Scotch fillet kind of like these, because they’re they’re a bit thick. It’S almost like you know. I want to have like sort of chary, sticky pork that I’m going to slice up and put in my pork bowl at the end gon na get those in there and I’ve got some Char seal sauce here. Chelsea was basically, you know, a Cantonese barbecue. Well, it’s called barbecue barbecue sauce.
It is Savory and sweet and sticky, and it’s the sauce that you would have tried if you’ve tried Chinese barbecue pork. So that’s the one, but you could kind of mix it up here with whatever kind of nice sticky sweet sauce, your family loves, you could do a Teriyaki here. That would be great, I think, but we’re going with child seal today so just give that a bit of a mix around and you know what, like, I love a store-bought. You know cheap wherever I can when it makes sense and when, when it tastes good, so I’m definitely not a food snob, as you guys would know. So that’s our pork, we’ll just leave that for a minute for the rice, we’re gon na go with a fried rice.
Now we found some really yummy um Chinese garlic chives at our local market this morning, so I’m using these but feel free to use spring onion. If you don’t have these, they have a really lovely mildly garlic kind of flavor to them sort of like kind of what it sounds like a little bit, chivey a little bit garlicky. I really love them when I can find them and I think a really natural pairing with Chinese garlic chives is egg. My mom actually makes this really amazing, like garlic, chive egg and pork soup when I’m sick. So I really love those flavors together.
So we’re going to do like an egg and garlic chive fried rice. I am going to doctor it up with some greens, though, because I am always trying during the week to eat a little bit more virtuously than I do on the weekends. Okay, I’m just doing some extra garlic here for me, standards to the fried rice business is garlic, onion and egg, so we’re gon na go with that now. If anyone has made any of my makeup Wednesday recipes I’d love to hear all about it. I’D like to see or I’d love to hear your feedback see any pictures you might have.
Please do post them and let me know we also now have um a review function on my website. So if you wanted to head to my website leave some reviews. Let me know I do love your feedback, though, because it means that I can better serve you guys. So please do. Let me know all right got some onion here as well.
I’M gon na get my pan heating up for my pork steaks. While I’m doing this, it’s kind of like a time management thing whenever I am cooking during the week, I’m home from work, I’m kind of thinking, okay, what’s going to take the longest, what can I prepare while I’m cooking, something else? So that’s really what gives you the leg up? I think during the week, taking the time to think a little bit about that, which is why I really love these makeup Wednesdays, because I’m trying to cook here as closely as possible to how I would cook at home all right. Onion always for me in a fried rice.
It’S just you know what it’s an it’s an Asian thing. My Thai mom cuts her onion in wedges for fried rice. I grew up eating it like that. So for me, fried rice has wedges of onion. If you prefer yours diced, please go ahead: okay, bits and pieces here, pan heating up I’m gon na go in with some Asian greens.
I was gon na steam these separately, but then I thought you know what let’s just stir fry it all together and that way we’re just using two pans and that’s the other thing with Wednesdays is no one wants to be doing the dishes on Wednesday. I’Ve got some kailan and some bok choy here you could do a mix of we could do whatever you like. Baby spinach is always great for fried rice during the week and with any of the larger pieces of the Chinese, broccoli or the Garland. Just make sure you kind of slice those a little bit thinner so that they cook at the same time, all right. Looking pretty good here pan is nice and hot go in with a little bit of oil.
I want to make sure I get a nice sticky kind of char on these, and also I don’t want to cook it um too long. Obviously, pork will dry out if you could get the two arms I kind of need to keep it an eye on the temperature. There make sure things are happening nicely. I’M going to mix up my eggs for my fried rice, while I’m here amazing, we’ll mix up my fried rice sauce. This is optional.
I’M doing it mainly, so I can kind of show you sort of the the quantities of ingredients, but if you wanted to save on dishes, do sort of put it in when you’re doing it. Yeah he’s going to us here, a shouty wine. This is totally optional. I’M gon na do a little bit of sesame oil here as well just a little dash of sugar. This is actually something else my mum does as well.
She always gets a dashing sugar into her fried rice, sauce. Okay, this pork is looking really good here, because we’ve got that kind of sweet marinade sauce. You are going to get a lovely Char on your pork steak. I mean look at that yeah! That’S what delicious already turn this down a little bit now.
I’Ve got color. So now I just want to make sure that my pork Cooks through also want to make sure I don’t get parsley sauce flatter on myself. Okay, so I’m going to swap these over now I’m going to pop this here and put this on a lower heat over here slightly lower. Here, I’m going to start my Wok heating up for my fried rice, which I have everything ready for, which is very fun. The other thing with doing the greens in your fried rice is that no one can kind of pick it out.
You know it’s harder to pick out the greens from the rice. If you have the steamed vegetable on the side, it’s very easy for people at the dinner table to not eat the greens. You know what I mean now make sure you are just keeping an eye on that fork and kind of flip it around a little bit as it Cooks, so that it’s getting a nice kind of glaze on it all right. Wok is smoking hot, which is great. A little bit of oil, I’m gon na go in with my onion.
I love that smell. You know the second, the onion picks that hot oil, it’s like! Oh, we are cooking. You know what I mean guys. Please do tell me where you’re watching from what are you doing?
It is currently morning time here in Queensland, Australia, and so it’s coffee time for me, but is it cocktail hour for you? Is it red wine out to you you? Let me know Kelly press down on these pork steaks here and hey I’m gon na go in with the skin parts of my greens here. So because I’m using tonic broccoli, it does have quite a firm stem. So I want to pop that in first step in turn, my pork over, so I’m gon na go in with my egg.
Here’S everything to the side a little bit more oil on the side. Here you can do your omelette separately by all means trying to save on time and washing up and all those things and spread that take it out fried rice. Nut is always a good night for me, I’m always in surprise. My kids are always into my bags. So I love it and once you kind of get into the swing of things, you know you’re going to have a fried rice night.
So, whenever I’m making rice like I’ll, make a Thai curry the night before I know I’m gon na make fried rice the next day. So I just make extra rice. It all kind of feeds into each other, oh kind of have an idea. You can go. The leaves I love how green and lovely and colorful this looks, I’m already feeling more virtual Valentines do benefit from just a little bit of heat, so I’m going to toss those in there.
Okay, rice and my fried rice sauce yeah. Look at that cut all that together until you have every grain of rice just beautifully coated in that sauce. Okay, I want – I just did a little bit of pepper here as well, again and yeah, not so traditional, to throw in a whole bunch of greens into your fried rice, but you know what it does the job. Let me just check the seasoning. You always just want to give your fried rice a check, make sure you don’t need any extra soy, sauce, perfect, just the right amount of salt, yes, because you’ve always got to be careful with your fried rice.
If anything leave out some of the sauce, if you’re not so sure, because if you get soggy fried rice, not much you can do about it, so leave off. You know adding too much at the start, but that’s really perfect. I’M actually gon na slice up. My pork steaks, which have been resting here while I’ve been finishing off that crab rice, please, okay, let’s slice up our pork steaks here. Oh that’s, just perfect!
Through there, it’s just cooked through still looks nice and juicy, and the great thing about that pork um or this pork Scotch cut is that you’ve got a lovely few little. You know sort of rivers of fat and juiciness that run through it. Unlike your pork loin, which is just you know, a little bit drier, but there you go, you can see how juicy that is through there. Oh literally, making my mouth away about rice – and I think also you know it’s a great way to put together quite a budget-friendly meal as well you’re not having to do expensive people, Pizza steak, but you’re still getting that really lovely kind of steak-ish Vibe. If you like nicely juicy slices of meat agrees: okay, it’s pork on the top yeah.
Now, I’m being a little bit green yeah. I do think that you could make those pork steaks go a little further on the servings, but you know we’re doing giant size portions. Today, because I feel like it uh, let’s have a look at some of these pan juices, which we absolutely do not want to waste. Okay, let’s drizzle that over the top just make it a little bit Fancy with some strand in here and there you go friends. Oh that looks so yum.
I am so into this um. This is our sticky, Charles seal pork, rice bowl, oh get much better. I don’t think so. I’M gon na get in here and try it. Let’S see how juicy this book is: oh yeah, so lovely and tender, and I love that that sweet marinade gives you that really lovely Char on the outside, so good, even though that pork’s been cooked a really short amount of time relatively because, usually like slow cooked Pork belly, but that is super tender.
That is a really good weeknight dinner, loving that so our little tray bag story here gets started by Browning off our pork rashes. So what are pork rashes? Well, you might find in your Supermarket they’re very common here in Australia and they look like this and they’re just basically it’s pork belly. That’S already been sliced, so you’re, not after bacon, rashes, you’re up to Pork Belly slices. This is a roasting or baking dish.
So this can go into the oven. It also can take a bit of heat on the stovetop. So you kind of need something like that and you want it nice and hot, pour in some oil. Now, I’m just going to add a little bit of salt here to season My Little Porky pieces, and now we go into the sizzle now the idea with a tray bag or with a good tray bag. Let’S put it that way is that you really need to like build up the flavor, so I’m going for some color here on this pork and that color means flavor.
I want to make sure I’m seasoning really well as well. So I know I put salt on the first side, a bit more salt on the second side. Okay, so, while that pork is doing its thing, we’ve got lots of time to make our sticky glaze. Now we’re going to start off with a little bit of Hoisin. First and then a little splash of some Chinese xiaoxing wine.
Now you can use apple juice or orange juice here, if you would like to keep your glazed alcohol free, that’s totally cool as well, and some soy sauce and to really ramp up the Chinese five-spice kind of character that you get with a Hoisin. I’M going to add in some extra Chinese five spice and actually, if you want to make this at home yourself from scratch, I’ve got a video on how to do that as well. So this glaze is going to give us like that Chinese barbecue pork kind of flavor a little bit later on, but I can hear that the pork over here is doing some talking. So let’s go back here and have a look um. This pork now has some really lovely just starting to get that kind of golden color through there, and that’s is going to start that flavor process for us okay.
So I want another five minutes on that second side as well, just to make sure that both sides is really lovely and golden. I’M gon na get these guys out onto a plate and they can just rest up until we need them again a little bit later. On now turn that heat off on the pan, but don’t lose all of that yumminess in the bottom there, and all of that brown stuff is all good stuff that we’re going to use later. On. First of all, though, I want to get my apples done and I love this kind of combination.
I mean it’s a bit, you know it’s not your average pork and apples. I guess because you’ve got that Chinese barbecue pork flavor going on, but I do think pork and apples. Well, you know they’re besties, they like each other, and I just want some nice big chunks here and now, some cabbage, so I’m using a Napa cabbage, also known as Chinese, cabbage or wombok. You could use any kind of cabbage that you like purple cabbage would be great here. Actually it would be lovely.
The color would be great anyway. That’S not what I have today, but I just want some nice slices here of cabbage all right. So, let’s come back to our lovely dirty pan here, lovely dirty! Well, it is because that lovely dirty is going to give us the flavor. I’Ve got quite a bit of oil and fat in there, so I’m not going to go in with any more I’m just going to go straight in with some chopped garlic and some grated Ginger, I’m just going to grate that straight in there.
The skin is really fine on this one. It’S quite a young Ginger, so I’m not even going to bother peeling. It make sure you’re scraping up lots of those bits on the bottom there. So now, in with your Apple and the cabbage, I love how this is such a cool Riff on, like classic flavors cabbage Apple, and it all gets done in one tray, so very convenient, also so just toss that around a little bit in there. But what I really want to do is make sure that I’m sort of picking up all of that lovely Brown flavor from the bottom of the pan.
So to do that, I want to add in some liquid I’m going to go in with some more shaoxing Chinese, cooking wine and some chicken stock as well and now, because we’ve added that liquid, all of that lovely stuff at the bottom. There is coming straight off. The pan, and that is going to form a really lovely flavored sauce. Now, let’s come back to our pork, so just lay the pieces in there now just give each of those pieces a lovely brush with some of our Hoisin glaze. That’S going to get things like nice and sweet and sticky all right, so this goes into the oven now for 20 minutes and then we’re going to come back flip that pork over and do a little bit more glazing.
Okay. So these are not ready yet they’re not ready for their Instagram picture just yet, I’m going to flip these guys over and we want another brush here now back into the oven. Another 15 minutes until we’ve got a lovely color on the other side. Thank you. So while the pork’s doing its thing, let’s do some final little Greenery over here, so I’ve got some spring onion here, but you could use some Thai Basil.
Some coriander would be nice just like a little final, like pop of freshness just at the end. So now we just want to wait for our pork, okay, so pork is currently smelling amazing right now. Let’S have a look, so just have a look at that lovely like glazed pork, and you know the apples, nice and softened in there and we’ve. I know that. There’S a really good sauce hanging out at the bottom of that tray as well.
So what I want to hear is make myself a nice little kind of rice bowl situation, so we’re going to go in with some pork. I want some apple as well. Some of that cabbage now you want to get in here and scoop up some of that sauce and just drizzle that all over your pork and just some final little bits of Love here we want some green spring onion and, of course, because I’m me there’s a Little pop of chili here as well, so there you go friends, my barbecue pork and apple cabbage, tray, bake, so easy and let’s just get in here and make sure that I’ve done a good job for you. Even though that pork’s been cooked a really short amount of time relatively because, usually like slow cook, roast pork, a pork belly, but that is super tender and that flavor, like you, get the Sweet Apple, you get that lovely glaze.
You get a big hit of chili from the slices at the end. That is a really good, weeknight dinner, loving that now you get those like Russian Roulette chilies, I’m like the hottest one in the bag; whoa, not spicy, but anyway, this pork is really good. Sweet, Sticky, pork braised in Asian spices. Ah, this is one Ultra comforting dish. This is my Taiwanese braised pork all right.
So there’s just something about sticky soy raised pork that melts the heart of every Asian. I know anyway, um uh and I’m usually making a Thai version, but today I’m making a Taiwanese version which I’m super excited about. Let’S get going on the pork first of all, so just a little Tipton about the pork I’m using pork belly and what you want are some really nice cute little cubes of pork belly. We want really small little bites here and skin on is fine as well. So when you’re buying pork belly, I think just make sure you’re not getting a piece.
That’S too fatty I mean we like fat, but not you know. We need some meat in there as well. Anyway, let’s get into the pan with a little bit of oil. First of all, so now we’re just going to seal off the pork, so add that into the pan. So we just want to give that pork – a few minutes in here just to start to get some color on it and, in the meantime, I’m going to grind up some Szechuan peppercorns.
So these guys add such a great, like not only flavor but also kind of like a tingling numbing sensation as well. If you haven’t tried out Szechuan peppercorns, I highly recommend ordering some just get them online. Get them sent to you. You know really easy. I always have them in my pantry there’s something a little special, so I’m just going to grind these up foreign, I’m getting that beautiful sort of high citrusy note, that’s the kind of Aroma and fragrance that you get from Sichuan, peppercorns!
Um! Look! If you can’t get a hold of these, just throw in some black peppercorns totally fine, but yeah try and find them. If you can, and just a rough kind of crushing here is all we need and get that straight into our pork. Now I’m also going to add in some garlic and some finely chopped shallots, I just let the garlic in the shallots kind of soften up a little in there, and now, let’s go in with some more aromatics here.
I’Ve got some star anise, some cinnamon and some bay leaves and a few slices of fresh ginger. These are all like classic Asian comfort, food fragrances and Aromas and spices, and all of these things just bring me so much joy. I hope they make you happy too. All right so now to build our braising liquid. We want some soy sauce and you want some sweet dark soy sauce as well.
So I’m using ketchup matters today, which is an Indonesian version, but you know just a regular Chinese dark soy sauce is fine as well. Um, just this thicker sweeter version adds a little bit more sweetness and some Chinese cooking wine as well. So xiaoxing wine adds a really beautiful, fragrance and Aroma to dishes like this. But obviously, if you want to keep your dish, alcohol free leave it out just add. Like a little bit of apple juice or pineapple juice for a bit more interest and sweetness, and now some brown sugar as well through now top that up with a little bit of water and then bring this up to a gentle simmer and let it cook away For about an hour until that pork is broken down is really sticky and tender and yummy.
So about 20 minutes before that, pork is done, I’m going to pour some hot water on some dried shiitake mushrooms, just to rehydrate them. I just need about 20 minutes all right. These mushrooms are looking nice and tender, I’m just gon na cut them in half and then just want to cut that stem out, because it always stays really kind of tough and chewy foreign. So amazing, I just love that comforting, like you know, cinnamon star, anise smell, oh so good, right now pop those mushrooms in there now I’ve just got some hard-boiled eggs. There eight minute eggs and I’m gon na pop those in there as well and now just gently kind of get those eggs coated, and I want to give this another like 10 minutes or so just so.
I’Ve got some nice color on those eggs all right guys. We are looking so good here check that pork out sticky glossy amazing braised pork like this, never fails to make me happy okay, so we want a nice spoonful of this onto some rice or a few spoonfuls and then grab an egg slice that in half now It goes on and then I’ve just got some lightly blanched bok choy. Here a little bit of greenery go as well. Here there you go guys sticky, sweet, braised, pork. I am going to enjoy this one that pork just melts completely melts amazing and that beautiful staranese flavor and the sweet soy, and just that hint of the Szechuan peppercorns in the background there.
Oh the whole thing so good, ultimate comfort, food. I just need a doona couch knee this bowl: heaven, grilled chicken spiced with lemongrass and garlic flavors drizzled, with a sweet Tangy dressing. This is my Vietnamese lemongrass chicken rice bowl. Well, I said this one couldn’t be any more simple and yet the flavor. So much flavor, I love that simple ingredients, big flavor, let’s get started on the flavor part first, and that is our marinade.
So, of course, I want some lemongrass, because it’s lemongrass grilled chicken – and you just want to give these guys a good bruising with your knife, foreign s off and then just take the outer parts of that lemongrass off. I find it’s really tough. It doesn’t tend to break down so take those off. You know, what’s really good to do with these actually is put them in the freezer and next time you’re making like Thai thumb, yum, soup or another kind of soup, where you’re just infusing with the lemongrass. You can use those bits because you’re not going to eat them of course, okay, so we just want a really fine Slice on these and pop that straight onto your chicken.
Now I’m using chicken thighs. I am a thigh and legs girl when it comes to chicken, but chicken breast is fine here as well, whatever you would prefer now. I also want some garlic and then here come all the big flavors fish sauce, just a little dash of sugar. That’S going to help with the caramelization as well as kind of balancing out that salty fish, sauce, flavor and then pepper. This is another big flavor that I want to really shine through here.
So I’m going to add quite a bit of that now. Just give that a mix – and you know what I love about this Vietnamese style marinade – is because the flavors are so large. It doesn’t really require very much time, so I just tend to give it a mix, and then we literally get straight onto the grill. This is a wonderful thing to do outside on the barbecue or just an indoor grill like I’ve got, or even just a frying pan either way is good. Now, once your grill Plate’s, nice and hot mine has already got a little slick of oil on there.
So if you’re doing this a frying pan make sure you add just a little bit of oil sizzles exactly what we want now I like to let these guys go for about five minutes or so on this first side, I’ll keep moving them around a little. Until I get a really beautiful, color all right time to put these guys over, I love that beautiful color. Look, how juicy those thighs look and I’m telling you the same smell amazing that lemongrass and garlic is really packed a punch all right. So these guys are looking pretty much done. What I like to do with thighs is just kind of leave them on the grill or in the pan, for a little while turn the heat off and just let them sit and cook through, because their thighs they won’t dry out, see that’s the other Advantage.
So in the meantime, let’s get all of our other little bits and pieces done, I’m going to make a little drizzling sauce a Vietnamese nog Chum. So I’m going to start off with some fish sauce, some vinegar, some sugar, and we want some red chili here. This is not a spicy chili, it’s mainly for some beautiful color and some garlic now for the Tangy element. Here we want some lime just give that a mix. I often make more of this little drizzling sauce than I need to because it keeps really well in the fridge for a few days and it’s a great dipping sauce salad dressing, it’s a great drizzle on just some rice noodles, a little bit of grilled pork.
It’S pretty great now I want some cucumber here as well and let’s take a look at our chicken, shall we, I can’t even tell you how amazing this smells guys. Ah now, just pop this onto a bowl of some rice, you want your cucumber nestled in there. Drizzle over some of that dressing and then just a few little sprigs of coriander, that’s my preference, but obviously, if you don’t like coriander, you could use another type of Asian herb. Thai Basil works really well here too, and there you go a Vietnamese style, lemongrass chicken, rice bowl, that’s so easy to put together and see how well we’ve gone. You know the simplest things sometimes bring the most Joy.
I mean that combination of the grilled, garlic and the lemongrass and then that fresh pop of the chili and the garlic and the Tangy dressing at the end, I mean wow totally blows you away. Ah, love it.
