Pork Belly with Ssamjang Sauce
This is a super fun dinner to eat, and very easy too. The combination of the fattiness of the pork, the salty umami ssamjang dipping sauce, refreshing lettuce leaves, sour kimchi and the neutralness of rice to balance it off, it’s sheer bliss.
Greg and I partnered up to play pickleball today and we both were playing pretty badly. It was frustrating. I am grateful though that we are very supportive of each other when we play together, regardless of whether we played well or not. Pickleball has added so much joy to our lives.
We got home and made this dinner, and decided we deserve to have some beer. Greg put on some chill vibes music, we cheerfully toasted each other with our beers, a quick kiss which is a tradition we have before we eat, then happily munched away on our pork belly wraps. Life is good and we are so blessed.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb pork belly, sliced into thick slices
- ssamjang dipping sauce (4 tbsp korean doenjang, 1 tbsp gochujang, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 clove minced garlic, mirin, honey, water to dilute it, mix well)
- fresh lettuce leaves
- sliced kim chi
- steamed rice
There is no need to season the pork as it’s eaten with ssamjang sauce, which is quite salty.
I like to boil the pork for about 10 minutes to clean it and reduce the taste of porkiness, but this step is optional.
Heat up a non stick grill pan preferably with grooves so the oil can drip down, no oil necessary. Pan fry each side for about 5 minutes each. Take the pork slices out and cut into thin bite sized pieces. Put the pork pieces back in the grill pan and cook for another 5 minutes, stir it a couple times to char evenly on all sides.
Assemble the wraps by taking a lettuce leaf, a spoonful of rice, a little bit of kimchi, 2-3 pork pieces and top it with ssamjang sauce. Eat it immediately and wash it down with beer.
