I love braising meat.
I love braising meat with my soup & stew donabe, "Miso-shiru Nabe", so much. This beautiful donabe is designed specifically for soup & stew making. The result is always amazing and this donabe made my braising experiences so much easier and delicious.
Pork belly (about 1 pound) was cut into large cubes and seasoned with salt (I let it rest in the fridge overnight). The meat was first blanched in boiling water for a couple of minutes and drained. By doing this, you can get rid of the foamy scum before cooking the meat, and the meat will not make the broth cloudy after braised.
In the donabe, sliced onion was laid on the bottom, followed by the blanched pork belly. 2 cups of water + 1/2 cup of sake were added.
The surface was lined with the parchment paper (with a little hole in the center). The donabe was covered and put in the 325F degrees oven.
After 2 hours in the oven, both pork and onion have become tender and smelled so nice. about 1 pound of Daikon (cut into 1" thick discus and cut further into quarters) was added along with 1 tablespoon of mirin, 1 teaspoon of agave syrup, and 1 tablespoon of usukuchi shoyu (light color soy sauce). The surface was lined with the parchment paper again. The donabe was covered and put it back in the oven for additional 1 hour.
After 1 hour, daikon was nicely tender, and the meat was super tender. 2.5 tablespoons of miso was added to the broth and dissolved. To finish, the donabe was set on the stove-top over medium-low heat, add a package of enoki mushrooms and some sliced yuzu rind, and simmered for a couple of minutes. Turn off the heat, and let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.
The dish smelled so wonderful and tasted amazing!! Pork was so tender and jiggly. Daikon soaked the deep flavors of the broth. It was so easy to make, because most cooking was done just in the oven and I could forget about it meanwhile. I served the dish with the mixture of scallion, mitsuba (Japanese parsley), and daikon sprouts on top, and sprinkled some sansho pepper (Japanese mountain pepper). Thank you, my Miso-shiru Nabe for the outstanding work!
You can find the full recipe on toiro's website.
Hapy donabe life.
