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Thai Noodle Soup with Pork Belly
Kuay Jub (Thai noodle soup with pork belly)
Kuay Jub. Thai rice noddle soup with pork belly. As far as I’m concerned, this is the ultimate comfort food. I recently ate this for the first time at my favorite local Thai restaurant, On’s Kitchen, and have never been so satisfied. I went home afterwards and took a nice nap, cradling my filled gut. This is a soup that will make you want to change your undies afterwards. Climactic. While there is a lot of steps and ingredients to make this soup, they are all fairly simple. The pork belly is the only thing that really requires a lot of time to cook. Cooking the belly at 225 first helps render out a lot of the fat. Turning it up to 400 for another 20 minutes will make the skin nice and crispy. If you are good at multitasking, while the pork belly is cooking, fry up the tofu and drain on a paper towel. Hard boil your eggs. Boil your rice noodle flakes. Make your soup stock. Get 2 birds stoned at once.
Servings: 2
Ingredients
Pork Belly
- 2 8 oz skin on pork belly slabs
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1/8 cup vinegar
- 1 tbsp salt
Noodle soup
- rice noodle flakes
- 1 cup bean sprouts
- 2 hard boiled eggs
- 2 cups fried tofu
- 5 cups water
- 3 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tbsp 5 spice powder
- 5 minced garlic cloves
- 1 tsp dried black peppercorns
- 1 tsp cilantro stalks diced
- 1/3 lb sliced pork
Garnish
- green onion
- cilantro
- fried garlic
Instructions
Pork Belly
- Mix fish sauce and vinegar together. Add the pork belly. Coat on all side and let marinate for 10 minutes.
- Put pork belly in a baking dish skin side up. Poke slits with a knife on the skin side to help render out the fat and make the skin crispy. Add salt to the skin side.
- Preheat oven to 225. Roast pork belly for 45 minutes. Turn up oven to 400 and roast pork belly for another 20 minutes until skin is crispy. Set aside
Noodle Soup
- In a stock pot, bring water, light and dark soy sauce, 5 spice powder, sugar, garlic, cilantro stalks, and peppercorns to a boil. Turn down to medium heat and add fried tofu and hard boiled eggs. Simmer covered for 15 minutes. Add sliced pork and cook for another 2 minutes.
- While the stock is cooking, soak 2 servings of rice noodle flakes in cold water for 3 minutes. Then add the rice noodle flakes to boling water and cook for 5 minutes. Drain.
Soup Assembly
- Put rice noodle flakes on the bottom. On top of them, in the center, add bean sprouts. On the left side of the sprouts, add chunks of pork belly. On the right side of the sprouts, add chunks of fried tofu from the stock. Take out one of the hard boiled eggs from the stock and slice in half. Put below he bean sprouts.
- Spoon over the soup ingredients the broth with the sliced pork. Garnish the top with green onion, cilantro, and fried garlic.
Omurice
Omurice
Omurice is an omelette stuffed with fried rice. This dish originated in Japan, but has spread to other Asian cultures. This particular version is Korean.You can use any type of protein in the fried rice such as ground pork, sliced pork, shrimp, chicken, ham, or leave it meatless. If you’d like, you can add mushrooms and bean sprouts to the rice. Make sure to use day old rice if possible. If making fresh rice, make it a little drier than usual. In Asian cultures, ketchup is considered an exotic condiment. If you don’t like ketchup like myself, you can use siracha to give it a little spice.
Servings: 1
Ingredients
Fried Rice
- 1 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
- 2 oz ground pork
- 1/4 onion finely diced
- 1/4 cup peas and carrots
- 2 green onion finely chopped
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 cup day old rice
- 1 tbsp ketchup or siracha
The Omelette
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
- 1 cup fried rice
Garnish
- ketchup or siracha
Instructions
Wake N Bake
- Rise and shine. Roll yourself up a nice sativa or sativa dominant hybrid. Get lit.
Fried Rice
- Add cooking oil to a skillet on medium high heat. Sauté the ground pork, onion, green onion, and peas and carrots for 3-4 minutes, until pork is fully cooked. Add black pepper and soy sauce. Cook for another minute.
- Stir in the day old rice. Cook for 2 minutes. Add in either ketchup or siracha. cook for another minute, then set aside.
The Omelette
- Beat eggs. Add oil to sautéed pan or griddle on medium heat. Add the eggs. Cook for a minute. While the eggs are still slightly runny in the middle, add the fried rice down the center of the omelette.
- Flip the left side over the center of the rice. Then flip the right side over the center.
- Flip over onto your plate. Garnish with either ketchup or siracha over the top.
Beef Bulgogi
Beef Bulgogi
Beef bulgogi is the most recognized Korean dish to the Westerner’s eyes and is considered one of the most popular in Korea. When you eat a a Korean BBQ restaurant and order Bulgogi, it is either being brought to you all ready prepared or you can grill it yourself at a table side grill. Bulgogi is traditionally beef, usually thinly sliced ribeye. You can also use NY strip or top sirloin as well. If you can’t find razor thin sliced beef, you can definitely slice it yourself. If using ny strip or top sirloin, make sure the fat cap is removed from the top of the meat. Partially freeze the meat to make slicing a little easier. The meat should be consistently sliced, less that an 1/8th”. When cooking the meat, use either a sauté pan, grill pan, or a griddle. Make sure that the pan is really hot. This is meant to cook very fast, hence why the meat is sliced thin. Do not overcrowd the pan when cooking. It will make the meat braise in it’s own juices instead of browning it. Using 1.5lbs of meat, I cooked this in 3 batches on a griddle.What really stands out to me in flavor is the use of Asian pear. It adds a nice sweetness to the meat, as well as being a natural tenderizer. If you can’t find asian pears, you can substitute an apple. I’ve seen recipes that use pineapple juice or mashed kiwi. Thai all have the same enzyme that is used in tenderizing meatBulgogi is traditionally served with rice. It is also great in a lettuce wrap with a little bit of soybean paste. I think I’m going to enjoy a wrap made with the devil’s lettuce right about now.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs ribeye, ny strip, or top sirloin sliced 1/8″ or thinner
- 1/4 cup shallots diced
- 1/4 cup carrots julienne
- 2 tbsp vegetable or canola oil
Bulgogi Marinade
- 5 tbsp light soy sauce
- 3 tbsp suger
- 2 tbsp rice wine
- 1 tbsp garlic minced
- 1 tsp ginger grated
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1/2 asian pear grated
- 2 tsp sesame seeds
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Garnish
- green onions finely diced
- sesame seeds
Instructions
- Mix all marinade ingredients together.
- For this recipe, I am using sliced NY strip that I purchased from my local Asian market. You can use ribeye or top sirloin as well.
- Add the meat to the marinade. Marinate for 6-8 hours, preferably overnight.
- Before you are about to cook the meat, add the julienne carrots and diced shallots.
- Preheat a sautée pan, stove top grill, or griddle over high heating add the cooking oil. Start adding the meat to the pan. Make sure to not overcrowd the pan. You don’t want the meat to braise in it’s juices. Cook for no more than a minute on one side.
- Flip meat to the other side and cook for another minute.
- Garnish with green onion and more sesame seeds.
- Beef Bulgogi is also is great in lettuce wraps!
