Hunan smoked pork
Pork belly salted, then smoked for weeks over a wood fire until dark and firm, sliced thin and stir-fried with garlic shoots or leeks and chilli.
What makes it hunan smoked pork
- Pork salted and then smoked, not just air-dried like Cantonese lap yuk.
- Steamed or boiled first, then sliced thin so the fat turns translucent.
- Stir-fried with something green and sharp — garlic shoots, leeks — and chilli.
Where it comes from
Làròu is 'meat of the twelfth month': pork cured in the cold weeks before the lunar new year, when families killed a pig and preserved it to last. In Hunan it's rubbed with salt, sometimes spices and wine, then hung above the kitchen hearth, where wood, rice husks or tea-seed shells smoulder beneath it.
It keeps for months. To cook it, it's washed, steamed or boiled until soft, then sliced and stir-fried — most often with green garlic shoots, sometimes with dried radish, smoked tofu or fresh chillies.
How it varies
- Làròu chǎo suànmiáo
- With green garlic shoots — the classic pairing.
- Làròu chǎo dòufu gān
- With smoked or dried tofu.
Be the first here
Start your own hunan smoked porkNo one here has made hunan smoked pork yet. Start it as v1, and every version after is an experiment the next cook can learn from.
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SichuanTwice-cooked porkPork belly simmered whole, sliced thin, then stir-fried until the edges curl, with chilli bean paste and green garlic or leeks.No one here has made it yet