David Chang's Pork Belly Buns

It isn’t exactly news that restaurants frequently camouflage certain menu items to make them more acceptable to the average patron. I’m not so excited about eating that fluffy pigeon I saw in the park the other day, but it tastes damn good if we all agree to call it squab. And Patagonian toothfish is called Chilean sea bass so you don’t have to imagine fork-stabbing some fangy carnivorous sea monster.
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We restaurant patrons live in a dreamy state of blissful denial. David Chang lives in a state of thinking we’re all pansies.
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In 2003, when Chang decided to add pork belly buns to the menu at Momofuku, most restaurants didn’t think they could sell a dish called pork belly. So they played the euphemism game – “bacon” sold great.
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“I refuse to call it fresh bacon,” Chang said in an interview with NPR. “I was like, we’re going to call it what it is, pork belly.” Chang basically has the same cooking philosophy as Lafayette from True Blood: “Bitch, you come into my house, you gonna eat the food the way I f***in’ make it!”
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It took only a few short years for Momofuku's pork belly bun to become an NYC icon. Demand is such that Chang had to add it to the repertoire at two more of his restaurants, Ssam Bar and Milk Bar bakery.
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Before I found the recipe for these buns in the Momofuku Cookbook, my assumption was that all this popularity must be due to some tricky Changian cooking method. All he does, though, is slow-oven roast the belly, slap on some salty-sweet cucumbers and hoisin, and slide it all into a hot steamed bun.

Here's how the pork belly looked when I took it out of the oven after a couple hours of low heat.

After cooling the pork belly in the refrigerator, slicing, and bunning, I was ready to pounce.

It’s awesome. But it doesn’t necessarily surpass similar buns you can get in New York’s Chinatown (Chang gives props to Oriental Garden), other American big cities, Taiwan, Tokyo, and the street corners of Manila.
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The best pork belly bun in the D.C. area is the gua bao sandwich served at North China Restaurant in Bethesda, just beating out the gua bao at Bob’s Noodle 66 in Rockville.

With gua bao, the pork belly is braised in a liquid flavored with five-spice, then combined with sweet-sour pickled mustard greens, sugary chopped-up peanuts (think Pad Thai), and cilantro.
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If Chang’s pork bun and North China’s gua bao were bands, Chang’s version would be the Beatles, and North China’s would be the Talking Heads: it’s popular on my playlist, but never quite became the A-list celebrity I expected.
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What’s the difference? Whereas Chang was one of the first to proudly acknowledge pork belly, restaurants like North China followed the trend and disguised their pork belly buns as “Taiwanese Hamburgers.” Chang was just ahead of his time in realizing people were ready to think that eating something called pork belly was cool. And, of course, that’s just the way he f***in’ makes it.


Other blogs about pork belly buns:

Kitchen Sidecar
http://www.kitchensidecar.com/2008/12/david-chang-is-my-homeboy-momofuku-pork.html


Three Squabbling Asians
http://www.threesquabblingasians.com/cooking-david-chang-pork-buns/


Ambitious Delicious(ness)
http://www.ambitiousdeliciousness.com/2010/03/29/changs-pork-belly-buns/


Momofuku for 2
http://momofukufor2.com/2010/01/momofuku-pork-buns/


Here's the recipe for pork buns straight from Momofuku Cookbook:


Pork Buns
1. Heat the bun in a steamer on the stovetop. It should be hot to the touch, which will take almost no time with just-made buns and 2 to 3 minutes with frozen buns.

2. Grab the bun from the steamer and flop it open on a plate. Slather the inside with the hoisin sauce, using a pastry brush or the back of a spoon. Arrange the pickles on one side of the fold in the bun and the slices of pork belly on the other. Scatter the belly and pickles with sliced scallion, fold closed, and voilà: pork bun. Serve with sriracha.



Pork Belly

for ramen, pork buns & just about anything else

Make enough pork for 6 to 8 bowls of ramen or about 12 pork buns

• One 3-pound slab skinless pork belly

• 1/4 cup kosher salt

• 1/4 cup sugar

The best part of this belly, besides the unctuous, fatty meat itself, which we use in two of our most popular dishes at the restaurants-ramen and pork buns-is the layer that settles at the bottom of the pan after you chill it. Most cooks who are familiar with it know it from making duck confit, and they know it's liquid gold (or jellied gold, if you want to get technical). We label containers of it "pork jelly." I add it to broths, to taré, to vegetable sautés-anything that would benefit from a hit of meaty flavor and the glossier mouthfeel the gelatin adds.

To harvest it, decant the fat and juices from the pan you cooked the belly in into a glass measuring cup or other clear container. Let it cool until the fat separates from the meat juices, which will settle to the bottom. Pour or scoop off the fat and reserve it for cooking. Save the juices, which will turn to a ready-to-use meat jelly after a couple of hours in the fridge. The meat jelly will keep for 1 week in the refrigerator or indefinitely in the freezer.

We get pork belly without the skin. If you can only find skin-on belly, don't fret. If the meat is cold and your knife is sharp, the skin is a cinch to slice off. And you can save it to make the Chicharrón we serve as a first bite at Momofuku Ko.

1. Nestle the belly into a roasting pan or other oven-safe vessel that holds it snugly. Mix together the salt and sugar in a small bowl and rub the mix all over the meat; discard any excess salt-and-sugar mixture. Cover the container with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge for at least 6 hours, but no longer than 24.

2. Heat the oven to 450ºF.

3. Discard any liquid that accumulated in the container. Put the belly in the oven, fat side up, and cook for 1 hour, basting it with the rendered fat at the halfway point, until it's an appetizing golden brown.

4. Turn the oven temperature down to 250ºF and cook for another 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, until the belly is tender-it shouldn't be falling apart, but it should have a down pillow-like yield to a firm finger poke. Remove the pan from the oven and transfer the belly to a plate. Decant the fat and the meat juices from the pan and reserve (see the headnote). Allow the belly to cool slightly.

5. When it's cool enough to handle, wrap the belly in plastic wrap or aluminum foil and put it in the fridge until it's thoroughly chilled and firm. (You can skip this step if you're pressed for time, but the only way to get neat, nice-looking slices is to chill the belly thoroughly before slicing it.)

6. Cut the pork belly into 1/2-inch-thick slices that are about 2 inches long. Warm them for serving in a pan over medium heat, just for a minute or two, until they are jiggly soft and heated through. Use at once.