Singapore Bak Kut Teh (Peppery Pork Rib Soup)

Name: Singapore Bak Kut Teh (Peppery Pork Rib Soup)
Total time: 2 h 15 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Singaporean (Teochew)
Ingredients: 900 g Pork ribs (loin/prime ribs); 3 tbsp Whole white peppercorns; 2 whole heads Garlic; 2 tbsp Light soy sauce; 1 tsp Dark soy sauce; 1 tbsp Rock sugar; 2 tsp Salt; 2.5 L Water; 4 Dried shiitake mushrooms; 2 Youtiao (Chinese fried dough sticks); 60 g Salted preserved vegetable (kiam chai); 1 small bowl Dark soy sauce and sliced chilli padi, for dipping; 4 bowls Steamed white rice; 1 small bunch Coriander

A pale, clear broth of pork ribs simmered with whole heads of garlic and a punishing amount of white pepper — Singapore's Teochew bak kut teh, eaten at breakfast with rice, youtiao and a pot of tea.

Fonte

Receita de Chinese-Singaporean hawker stalls · 🏺 Tradicional · Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese stall cooking in Singapore's hawker centres and coffee shops

Singapore Teochew style · hawker and coffee-shop dish — An ownerless dish with a disputed origin, so no cook is credited and no country is declared the inventor. The reference records that the origin is unclear and is variously said to have come from Fujian or to have been created by a Chinese physician in the 1930s, and it sets out the split this recipe follows: the Teochew style is 'light in colour but uses more pepper and garlic in the soup', while the Hokkien style 'uses a variety of herbs and soy sauce creating a more fragrant, textured and darker soup'. This entry is the Teochew bowl as eaten in Singapore; the herbal Klang bowl is filed under Malaysia elsewhere in this book. The article also notes the dish contains no tea leaves. Quantities are this book's own.

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⏱ 135 min🍽 4 porções🔥 480 kcal🇸🇬 Singapura🌶️🌶️

Sem lactose

Modo de preparo

Cover the ribs with cold water, bring to the boil and let them bubble hard for 3 minutes. Grey scum will rise. Tip it all out and rinse each rib under the tap.
💡 This one wasteful-looking step is the difference between a clear broth and a cloudy one. Do not skip it.
Toast the peppercorns in a dry pan for 1 minute until they smell sharp, then crack them roughly — a rolling pin or the flat of a knife is fine. Do not grind them to powder.
💡 Cracked pepper releases its heat slowly over two hours. Ground pepper dumps everything in the first ten minutes and then tastes dusty.
Put the rinsed ribs, cracked pepper, halved garlic heads and mushrooms into a clean pot with 2.5 litres of water. Bring to the boil, then drop it to the barest simmer and leave it, lid ajar, for 2 hours.
💡 A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and makes the broth cloudy and heavy. You want the surface barely trembling.
At the 90-minute mark, add the light soy, the teaspoon of dark soy, the rock sugar and the salt. Taste and keep tasting for the last half hour — this is when you decide how hot and how salty your bowl is.
💡 Not peppery enough at the end? Crack another spoonful and give it 10 more minutes. It catches up fast.
Serve each person ribs and broth in a deep bowl, with a bowl of rice, the salted vegetable, warm youtiao and the dipping saucer of dark soy and chilli.
💡 Dunk the youtiao only as you eat it. Left in the bowl it turns to sponge in under a minute.

💡 Dicas

PORK — pork ribs are the entire dish. It is not halal and there is no substitution that leaves it recognisable.
Do not confuse it with the Malaysian bowl already in this book. Singapore's Teochew version is pale, clear, garlicky and fiercely peppery. Malaysia's Klang Hokkien version is dark, sweet and herbal with angelica and other Chinese herbs. Same name, different soup.
There is no tea in it. 'Bak kut teh' is Hokkien for 'meat bone tea', and the tea part refers to the pot of oolong drunk alongside to cut the fat — brew some, it genuinely helps.
Make it the day before, chill it, and lift the solid fat off the top. The broth is better and the ribs fall apart more willingly on reheating.