How to Make Lu Rou Fan
cooking with steam season two, episode three: taiwanese braised pork rice
This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.
The second season of our Taiwanese cooking show, Cooking With Steam, explores Taiwanese food through the lens of 古早味 gu zao wei. This phrase translates to “ancient flavor,” dbut largely refers to pre-war Taiwanese foods that represent a more agrarian diet and, to me, feel especially homestyle.
The next episode of Cooking With Steam is here: Lu Rou Fan 滷肉飯.
In episode three of season two, I demonstrate my recipe for Taiwanese braised pork over rice, featuring a surprise secret ingredient. This dish is THE Taiwanese comfort food and cure for (or progenitor of?) acute homesickness. It can be found across Taiwan in homes, street stalls, and restaurants. For me, it’s a national dish with endless variations: from oily and unctuous to sticky and sweet.
COOKING WITH STEAM Season 02 Episode 03
Lu Rou Fan (Taiwanese Braised Pork Over Rice)
好蒸氣 第二季 03 | 滷肉飯
I wrote all about this dish last year when we introduced Chez Kuo’s travel guide Luroufan Taiwan, celebrating this dish and all the best iterations of it found throughout the island.
There are many versions of the perfect Lu Rou Fan, and each one is correct. Mine has a thin, fatty sauce, with only a touch of sweetness and meltingly tender pieces of fatty pork belly. It doesn’t sit on top of the rice like a stew, but soaks into it the way a pat of butter would, leaving all the tender pork morsels on top, like jewels. Treasures.
The version I see most often in the US comes with a braised egg, a slice of yellow pickled daikon, and a piece or two of bok choy. While this bento-style lu rou is one way of serving it in Taiwan, I experienced something different at small establishments around the island, where lu rou isn’t really a main dish, in the American sense of the phrase.
At these eateries, it’s a side and a staple at the same time. Instead of a bowl of white rice, one might order a serving of lu rou fan and a selection of vegetables, soups, and other small dishes. All servings are small, on equal footing, and provide a variety of color, texture, and flavor at the table. Lu rou in this context isn’t usually served with any particular de facto garnish, though some places have a signature pairing, like sour vegetable, black pepper, or even fish floss.
Read the full piece below:
We still have a few copies of Chez’s book left online and in store; it’s a great gift for anyone planning to travel to Taiwan (or homesick for it).
The Recipe
This recipe comes from our Yun Hai Tatung Family Cookbook. I’ve prepared it on the stove, but you could also do this in a Tatung Electric Steamer.
The formula is pretty simple: bloom your aromatics; brown your pork belly (or mushrooms as the case may be); add your seasonings, sauces, and sweetener; and let it bubble away with a spice pack until the sauce is reduced and the pork slices (or mushrooms) are tender.
Ingredients and Equipment
I love to show off my collection of ceramics, props, everyday objects, and kitchen tools on the show, many of them gifted by friends or collected personally over the years. Here’s a little more information on what I used this episode.
The Taiwanese icon-patterned serving plate used to mise shiitake mushrooms was made by Taiwanese artist Hsiang Jung Chen, a precious gift to me from Taiwanese art director and designer Yenwei Liu.
The celadon serving bowl used during the demo and the white serving bowl used for the beauty shot were both made by my friend Matthew So.
For the recipe, I slice the pork belly using our Maestro Wu Cleaver on a Material Kitchen cutting board. I chop the aromatics using our Maestro Wu Fish Knife on a round ironwood cutting board, which I purchased from an Asian grocery store in Detroit over 15 years ago. To steam the rice, I use the 6-cup Tatung Steamer.
And, for the recipes, we incorporated a few things from Yun Hai Shop, like our Thirteen Spice Braise Pack, Firewood Soy Paste, Vat Bottom Soy Sauce, dried shiitake mushrooms, and penglai short-grain rice.
Please reach out with any other questions on sourcing or ingredients. Happy to help, as always.
Gratitude and Acknowledgements
We couldn’t have done this without the support and passion of our friends and community. So much love and gratitude to Night Shift, who produced this, and all our creative collaborators for giving the show its unique voice.
Credits
Produced by Night Shift and Yun Hai
Made possible by Tatung Taiwan
Team:
Lisa Cheng Smith, host
Jessica Wang, guest talent
Jessie YuChen, food stylist & guest talent
Nicole Wang, culinary assistant
Amalissa Uytingco, culinary producer
Sam Broscoe, producer
Alec Sutherland, director & editor
Nathan Bailey, director of photography
Rob Woods, camera operator
Taylor Dekker, camera operator
Alexandra Egan, art director
Kyle Garvey, sound mixer
Jinho Myung, editor
R. Hollis Smith, mix
Rebecca Alexander, hair and makeup
Dustin Wong, music
O.OO, graphics
Jil Tai & Ben Hill, motion design and title sequence
Rachel Watson, behind-the-scenes photography
Our Set
Our set features props from Taiwanese, Taiwanese-American, and international friends worldwide, creating those Taiwancore vibes we love so much at Yun Hai.
Thank you for the beauty Mikey Chen, Lillian Li, Emilie Liu, Debbie Carlos, Matthew So, Kelli Cain, Material Kitchen, Mogutable, Felicia Liang, Sam Tilney, Lulu Yao Gioiello, Grace Jung, Eric Sze, Julianne Ahn, Alice Chai, Stephanie Smith, Rio Chen, and Leh Lin.
And much gratitude to our friends who contributed to wardrobe: Everybody World, Judi Rosen, Whimsy and Row, RMS Beauty, and Christine Mai Nguyen.
Special Thanks
Russell Wang, Maggie Chang, Shirley Liu, Ivan Wu, Feng Hsieh, Hollow, Chris, Leon, Simon, Agnes, Jim, Lillian Lin, Jasmine Huang, Natya Regensburger, Jeremy Hersh, Cat Yeh & the entire Yun Hai Team, our partners, and our community.
Before I Go
We have remodeled the store! In fact, I’m sitting in it right now, trying to wrap this letter up so I can put it all back together before we open again tomorrow. It’s so, so exciting.
Thanks to Jess Chen, Deirdre McDermott, and Nicholas McDermott of Future Expansion, Jason Chernak (one of my oldest friends!) and his crew at Offcut Design/Fabrication, and our store team Jeremy Hersh and Natya Regensburger for all their input, support, and production on this. We’re solidly in the era of Yun Hai 2.0.
We’ll be open again in our new form from tomorrow, December 6th. A few reminders before I sign off for today and get back to merchandising.
Holiday Shopping Event: Please join us on Sunday 12/14 from 11-5pm for a special grand reopening event, where we’ll be welcoming you into our updated space, with new furniture, never-before-seen artworks from Emilie Liu, brand new store merch, Taiwanese marshmallows (my hobby, apparently), and gift-wrapping in Yun Hai newsprint.
Last Day to Ship: The last day to ship in time for arrival before Christmas is December 14th. Please plan accordingly!
Almanacs: We are sold out of lunisolar almanacs online. However, copies are still available for purchase at our Brooklyn store. For stockists outside of New York, Park Life (San Francisco, CA), Abacus Row (San Francisco, CA), and Chess Club (Portland, OR) also have limited copies available at their shops. Otherwise, please sign up for the waitlist to be the first to hear when our 2027 lunisolar almanac launches preorders.
Your resident Lu Rou Fan fan,
Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉
Written with editorial support by Amalissa Uytingco, Jasmine Huang, and Lillian Lin. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with friends and subscribe if you haven’t already. I email once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. For more Taiwanese food, head to yunhai.shop, follow us on instagram and twitter, or view the newsletter archives.
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This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.
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This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.