If you’ve got a frying pan and some aluminum foil, this kurukuru chashu recipe is ready to revolutionize your home cooking.
Whether you’re someone who likes cooking for yourself, don’t have any good restaurants in your neighborhood, or just don’t feel like going out to eat, a bowl of ramen is pretty simple to whip up for yourself. Well…it’s mostly simple.
Ramen noodles and soup stock are easy to find at supermarkets, even if you live outside of Japan, and their long shelf life means you can keep some stocked in your pantry for whenever your cravings hit. What’s not so easy to source, though, is chashu roast pork, which many enthusiasts would say is just as critical to the joy of ramen as the noodles and broth are.
Luckily, it turns out there’s an easy way to make your own chashu, and you don’t even need a huge, restaurant-size chunk of meat to work with, or any specialized cooking equipment other than a frying pan and a lid!
Cluing us in to this is Japanese aluminum foil maker Toyo Aluminum, who’s shared a recipe for “kurukuru (roll-up) chashu” through its official website. As you can probably guess, you will need aluminum foil, and plastic wrap too, plus a handful of basic ingredients, but this still sounds like an easy way to make chashu at home, so today we’re giving it a shot for ourselves.
Ingredients
● Thin-sliced pork loin (400 grams [14.1 ounces])
● Soy sauce (2 tablespoons)
● Cooking sake (2 tablespoons)
● Honey (1 tablespoon)
● Water
● Salt
● Pepper
● Flour
● Cooking oil
Step 1
Start by spreading a sheet of plastic wrap over a cutting board, then lay out half of the strips of pork, slightly overlapping them. Evenly sprinkle them with dashes of salt, pepper, and flour. Picking up the edge of the plastic wrap, tightly roll the pork slices from front to back, then unroll the plastic.
Step 2
Repeat Step 1 with the remaining pork slices, but roll them onto the top of the rolled pork from Step 1, with the first roll’s seam facing downward.
Step 3
You should now have one large mass of meat. Apply a thin layer of cooking oil to a sheet of aluminum foil, then place the meat on top of it. Tightly roll the foil and tie off the ends as shown in the photo below.
Step 4
Apply oil to a frying pan, then place the foil-wrapped meat in it to cook for five minutes, occasionally rotating the cylinder.
Step 5
With the foil-wrapped meat positioned so that the wrapping’s seam is facing upward, add two cups of water to the frying pan. Place a lid on the pan and let the meet cook on medium heat for 15 minutes.
Step 6
Now it’s time to take the meat out of the pan and remove the foil…and also to resist the urge to start chowing down, because we still need to season our chashu. Drain the water from the frying pan, wipe the pan off, and then add the soy sauce, cooking sake, honey, and one tablespoon of water. Heat the mixture in the pan, then add the meat, coating it and letting the sauce simmer until it thickens.
Once the sauce thickens, your kurukuru chashu is ready to eat! Simply slice it into your desired thickness, which should be easy to do since, if everything has gone according to plan, it’ll be tender and juicy.
While the most common way to eat chashu is as a ramen topping, that’s far from the only option, and the delicious flavor here means it’ll work just fine as a main course too, maybe with some white rice to compliment the meaty succulence. This recipe is also incredibly well suited to picnics, potlucks, and other parties, as cutting it into bite-sized pieces turns it into an easy-to-munch-on crowd-pleaser with a flavor that’ll be enjoyed by just about anyone, regardless of whether or not they’re already a Japanese cuisine enthusiast.
And if even this mouthwatering recipe doesn’t have you inspired to make your own chashu, if you happen to be in downtown Tokyo, we know a ramen restaurant that’ll hook you up with a monstrous amount of meat too.
Reference: Toyo Aluminum
Photos ©SoraNews24
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