醬瓜肉 (Jiang Gua Rou)

A dish originally designed to help stretch a small amount of meat, pork with pickled cucumbers is a comfort food with both sweet and savory notes. This is a Taiwanese Hakka[1] recipe, and employs hua gua (花瓜), a mild and sweet Chinese pickled cucumber popular in Fujian and Taiwan.[2] It is also incredibly easy to make, particularly if you have some cooked Taiwanese minced pork in your refrigerator or freezer. This dish refrigerates and reheats well in the microwave.

Ingredients

8 oz (½ batch) Taiwanese minced pork, cooked
12 oz (2 cans) of Taiwanese hua gua
pickled cucumbers
3 scallions, chopped
2 tsp cornstarch

Finely chop the pickles into approximately 1 cm pieces. Reserve the pickling liquid and set aside. Combine the cooked Taiwanese minced pork and pickles in a pot. Add a quarter cup of the pickling liquid and three quarters of a cup of water to the pot, and bring to a boil. Both the pork and pickles are cooked, so we are just to bring the ingredients up to temperature and letting the flavors meld.

Add a quarter cup of the pickling liquid and three quarters of a cup of water to the pot, and bring to a boil. Both the pork and pickles are cooked, so we are just to bring the ingredients up to temperature and letting the flavors meld.

While this is going on, prepare a cornstarch slurry by mixing cornstarch with cold water in a separate container until there are no lumps of cornstarch. After a couple of minutes at the boil, pour the slurry into the pot, stirring immediately.

Keep the pot at the boil for another couple of minutes, until the sauce thickens and becomes glossy. Mix in the chopped scallions and remove from heat. Serve this dish over rice, being sure to let the rice absorb plenty of the sauce.

Substitutions

When it comes to seasoning this dish, the salt is coming from the minced pork recipe, as well as the pickling liquid. Depending on your minced pork preparation the brand of your pickled cucumbers, and your tastes, you may want to adjust this. The best method for doing this is to adjust the amount of pickling liquid you are using—more for more salt, less for less salt. Just adjust the volume of water accordingly, such that you always add a total of 1 cup of fluid.

You can elect to add some vegetables to this dish—I recommend carrots and mushrooms as vegetables which complement the flavor profile well. Dice the vegetables to the same size as the pickles, and add them together with the meat and the cucumbers. You may have to increase the cooking time to cook these vegetables through.

Hua gua pickled cucumbers can be found in most East Asian supermarkets, but you can also make them from scratch with any small cucumber variety—the hua gua pickle brine consists of soy sauce, sugar, and rice vinegar, along with a hint of licorice root or star anise. There are several good recipes for these pickles available on the internet.

[1] The Hakka are a cultural Han Chinese minority. About 20% of the Taiwanese population is Hakka, their ancestors coming to Taiwan from the mainland when the Ming Dynasty fell (1644).

[2] There exists another Taiwanese dish, guo zi rou, which uses more or less the same ingredients, but is a steamed meatloaf preparation.

Recipe

Prep Time: 5 min Cook Time: 5 min Total Time: 10 min

Difficulty: 1/5

Heat Sources: 1 burner

Equipment: pot

Servings: 6

Ingredients

8 oz (½ batch) Taiwanese minced pork, cooked
12 oz (2 cans) of Taiwanese hua gua pickled cucumbers
3 scallions, chopped
2 tsp cornstarch

Instructions

1. Finely chop the pickled cucumbers, reserving the pickling liquid.

2. In a pot, combine the cooked minced pork, diced pickles, ¼ cup of the pickling liquid, and ¾ cup water, and bring to a boil.

3. To thicken the sauce, prepare a cornstarch slurry by mixing the cornstarch with a small amount of cold water. Pour this slurry into the pot and stir, maintaining the boil until the sauce becomes glossy.

4. Add the chopped scallions to the pot, stir to combine, and remove the pot from the heat. Taste for salt, season if necessary, and serve.