This Vietnamese caramelized pork belly and spaghetti situation happened right before we moved house.
(Ten years ago when I first wrote this post) I was cleaning out the freezer and found a sad frozen package of on sale pork belly that I stashed away for a rainy day. We were moving and all of our stuff was packed up, except for some dry pasta and the freezer. After a couple of minutes of me staring blankly into the freezer, it came to me: Vietnamese caramelized pork belly!
That was obvious choice; not so obvious was tossing it with spaghetti, but after after my first few wordless bites, I started OMG-ing. Seriously, seriously good. Sweet and savory chunks of caramelized pork belly, as much black pepper as you can stand, al dente spaghetti and you’ve got yourself a super comforting bowl of deliciousness.
Pork belly
Pork belly: without a doubt, it’s a love it or hate it thing and I’m defiantly on the love it side. I have lots of friends that won’t touch the stuff. They think it’s incredibly unhealthy because of all the layers of fat. I get where they’re coming from, but pork belly (when it’s done right) is SO delicious.
They sell pork belly in a variety of ways – I found the belly I used here at Whole Foods for a super reasonable price (less than $4!). The belly I bought was in about 1/4 inch slices, which I then cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Try to find belly with a reasonable meat to fat ratio.
Pork belly pasta
If you do have some picky eaters on your hands and want to expose them to the deliciousness of both pork belly and Vietnamese flavors, you have got to give this Vietnamese caramelized pork belly pasta a go. If you haven’t used fish sauce before, don’t worry, it’s not actually that fishy tasting. Think of it as a boosted up, crazy umami packed soy sauce flavor. It’s super flavorful and surprisingly perfect with pasta.
Fish sauce
Is there anyone these days who doesn’t know (and love) fish sauce? But, for this dish, make sure the fish sauce you’re using is transparent. There’s a fermented kind of fish sauce that is an opaque brown and it’s quite a bit different than the fish sauce we non-Vietnamese peeps are used to. Click here to read more about fish sauce. If you are in the market for a new one, this is our favorite one.
The best pasta
If you don’t already have a favorite brand of pasta, check out bronze extruded pasta. You can tell when the surface of the pasta looks sandier. The rougher surface picks up sauces better than the more inexpensive smooth pasta. Best of all, although it’s “expensive” vs “inexpensive”, the price difference is usually a dollar or two. Our current favorite brands are pastificio di martino and rustichella d’abruzzo. But any pasta cut with a bronze die is going to be great.
xoxo steph
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 lb pork belly cubed
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 cup water
- 1 shallot sliced
- 1/2 onion sliced
- freshly ground black pepper
- 8-12 oz spaghetti bronze extruded preferred
Instructions
- In a cast iron skillet or heavy bottomed pan, add the sugar and melt over medium to medium high heat. Don’t stir, just let the sugar melt and turn a deep caramel brown color, 3-5 minutes.
- Add the pork belly, stir and cook until lightly golden brown, about 5 minutes.
- Stir in the the water, fish sauce, onions and shallots. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat until the liquid is at a simmer.
- Simmer, stirring occasionally, until tender and the sauce reduces greatly, about 20-30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water up to a boil and cook the spaghetti according to the package time. When done, drain and do not rinse. Add the pasta directly into the pan and toss to coat.
- Taste and season with plenty of black pepper. Enjoy immediately!
Notes
Estimated Nutrition
I made this this evening. It was simple, inexpensive and absolutely delicious!!! I’m so glad I stumbled across this recipe.
What camera do you use to take photos? They’re all so great!
it’s a nikon d810!
hi.it’s my first time commenting. i tried this dish when you first uped it on your blog. i found it a tad too sweet for my italian taste buds, but i love trying new stuff. also didn’t know i could comment on your blog. i bought your cook book. it’s really beautiful. my compliments
This dish was just awful. I had a wonderful piece of pork belly and the only thing in this dish I could taste was the fish sauce (way too much) and the sugar. My house still smells of fish sauce the day after I cooked it. I was not able to eat the dinner neither was my daughter. Maybe if your into fish sauce and sugar this dish would work.
I love this blog, and this dish is clearly super dank, but I’d like to point out one thing. Fish sauce is not really a condiment that you can season to taste, because the funky, fishy gross smell doesn’t cook out immediately, so once you commit to adding more fish sauce to a dish, you should cook it for another five minutes or so to get some of that funk out and leave only the beautiful umami flavors. If you’ve never used it before, start with the fish sauce, and then, if at the end your dish isn’t salty enough, just add some soy sauce or salt, rather than a splash of fish sauce, at least if you don’t particularly like, or are not used to that fishy funkiness, but want a particularly savory dish. Otherwise, though, this dish is magic.
I made this tonight…it smells great, but looks not so good!
As soon as I added the pork to the pan, it started to broil…not caramelise, which I suspected it would.
Tastes nice, but next time I will do it my way.
I just made this. It was really quite tasty. I had some left over pork belly from a roast yesterday and sliced it very thinly (more like ramen size). Added it in after the sauce had reduced somewhat and left it to cook slowly. The pork was obscenely melty delicious. I also added a little bacon to top up the pork. Added a really lovely smokiness to the dish.
Thanks for posting.