Paigu Fan (Taiwanese Pork Chop Rice)

Name: Paigu Fan (Taiwanese Pork Chop Rice)
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Taiwanese
Ingredients: 4 × 150 g Boneless pork loin chops; 3 tbsp Light soy sauce; 2 tbsp Rice wine (mijiu); 4 cloves Garlic, finely grated; 1 tsp Five-spice powder; 1 tsp White pepper; 1 tbsp Sugar; 1 Egg, beaten; 150 g Coarse sweet potato starch; 800 ml Neutral frying oil; 360 g Short-grain white rice; 4 Eggs, for braising; 300 g Leafy greens (bok choy, water spinach or cabbage); 60 g Pickled radish or pickled mustard greens

The lunchbox that Taiwan's railways made famous: a pounded pork loin marinated in five-spice and garlic, fried in sweet potato starch, sliced over rice with a braised egg, greens and pickles.

Fonte

Ricetta di Taiwanese home kitchens · 🏺 Tradizionale · Taiwanese household cooking — Hokkien roots, with a Japanese-era layer and a postwar mainland layer on top

Taiwanese lunchbox cooking · railway bento tradition — An ownerless everyday dish; no creator is credited. The cited page is the Chinese-language Wikipedia article 排骨飯 (fetched, HTTP 200) — there is no English article for this dish, which is stated here rather than papered over with a substitute URL. It records that the Taiwanese version uses large loin chops prepared either as a batter-coated soft fry or a dry fry in sweet potato starch, flour or breadcrumbs, that some versions are fried and then braised, that it is served over rice with vegetables, chilli and pickled radish under a sauce, and that Taiwan Railway lunchboxes (台鐵便當) feature both fried and braised pork chop and helped popularise the dish. The Japanese title given here reflects that 排骨飯 is a documented dish name in Japanese (パイコー); the lunchbox format itself entered Taiwan as bentō during Japanese rule. Quantities are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made

Ms J Kitchen Classroom

⏱ 60 min🍽 4 porzioni🔥 680 kcal🇹🇼 Taiwan

Senza latticini

Passaggi

Lay each chop between two sheets of baking paper and pound it out to about 1 cm with a rolling pin or the flat of a heavy knife.
💡 Then cut two or three shallow nicks through the strip of white sinew along one edge. Skip this and the chop curls into a bowl the moment it hits the oil.
Mix the soy, rice wine, garlic, five-spice, white pepper, sugar and beaten egg, rub it into the chops, and leave them at least 30 minutes — overnight in the fridge is better.
Start the rice, braise the eggs, and cook the greens now — the chops take 4 minutes and everything else should already be waiting.
Press each chop firmly into the coarse starch on both sides, then let them stand 5 minutes until the coating looks damp and patchy rather than powdery.
Heat the oil to 170°C and fry the chops two at a time for about 4 minutes, turning once, until deep gold. Rest them on a rack for 3 minutes before slicing.
💡 Slice across the grain into 2 cm strips and lay them back in the chop's original shape on the rice. That fanned line-up is what the lunchbox looks like.
Pack each box or bowl with rice, the sliced chop, half a braised egg, the greens and a pinch of pickles, keeping each in its own corner rather than mixed.

💡 Consigli

Some shops fry the chop and then simmer it briefly in braising liquid, which softens the crust into something closer to a braise. Both versions are sold as paigu fan.
It is designed to be eaten at room temperature on a train, so it is one of the few fried dishes that survives an hour in a box.
Use the leftover braising liquid from the eggs as a spoonful of sauce over the rice — that is what turns a plate into a Taiwanese lunchbox.