Chashu Pork (チャーシュー)

Chashu is the Japanese adaptation of Chinese char siu, but where char siu is roasted or grilled with a sweet glaze, Japanese chashu is braised. The pork belly sits in a bath of soy sauce, sake, ginger, and garlic at a low simmer for about an hour, and during that time the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin, the fat renders until it is translucent and silky, and the meat absorbs the soy-sake liquid until it is deeply savory all the way through. When you slice it thin and lay it on top of a bowl of ramen, the heat of the broth finishes the work, softening each slice until it practically dissolves on your tongue.

The recipe is almost absurdly simple for how good the result is. Five ingredients plus water. No marinating, no searing, no oven. You put everything in a pot, bring it to a boil, skim the foam, drop to a simmer, and walk away for an hour. The hardest part is not eating it all before it makes it onto the ramen.

The braising liquid that remains after cooking is liquid gold. It is essentially a concentrated shoyu tare, the seasoning base for soy sauce ramen. Save every drop. Use it to marinate ramen eggs, to season the broth in a bowl of shoyu ramen, or to simmer bamboo shoots into menma. A batch of chashu is really three recipes in one: the meat, the eggs, and the broth.