Cook With Ken - Japanese Onion Soya Pork Tofu 日本酱油豆腐猪肉

Date:  Jan 25, 2015

I always wanted to cook very simple and nice food.

The food got to be tasty, but most importantly, it has to be easy to cook.

We always love to eat Japanese food, especially, my younger son Kay Kay.

So far, Kay Kay loves this dish.  Whenever I cook this dish, he would have a big bowl of rice to go with it.

Let’s find out how I cook this.

I don’t know or can’t recall what they call it in Japan, but I called it Japanese Onion Soya Pork Tofu 日本酱油豆腐猪肉.

What Do You Need

1.  2x Big Onions.  White, Yellow or Red, it does not matter, but I like the taste of White Onions.  So, you first cut it into half, and then slice it.

2.  Pork.  You can use Minced Pork (Kay Kay likes this).  

OR you can use this shabu shabu type of pork.  Looks like bacon kind of pork strips.  Usually you get it from Japanese super market such as Isetan, or Mediya.  Today, let’s use this to cook.

3.  Special Sauce.  I use this special delicious soya sauce from Hokkaido.  You can get it from Isetan Super Market @ West Gate.    

It is called Hokkaido Tokachi Butadon Tare.  This soya sauce is the best that I have ever bought.  After you cooked the meal, it taste exactly like those made in the restaurant.  hahaha

4.  Any tofu will do.  For steaming use.

Let’s Cook

a.  Always heat the frying pan.  The pan should be heated enough so that you drop a drop of water, the water is running on the hot pan.

b.  Put some cooking oil into the hot pan.

c.  Put in the onions.  Stir fry a bit.

d.  Cover the pan, lower the stove fire to MINUMUM.  Let the slow fire slowly cook the onions slowly.  It takes about 5min to 10min.

e.  Next, place the pork nicely into the pot.  As you can see the onions already soften.  Then, put in secret sauce.  I put half bottle of it.

f.  I add in very little water into it.  I don’t want it to be too salty.  So I add just a little, may be 2-3 soup spoon.  You do not want to add too much to dilute the soya sauce.  The soya sauce secret sauce is the key to this dish.  It is sweet and a little salty.  So, adding water is to keep the sweetness but dilute the saltiness.

g.  Again, cover the pan.

h.  Use smallest fire to simmer it.

i.  2-3 minutes later, open the pan.  You can see most of the pork bottom park cook, but top part still pink color.  So, it’s time to turn the pork.  Did you see the sauce?  That is the amount of sauce you need to keep seamer the pork.

j.  Turn the pork over.  Stir fry a bit.

k.  My "tofu son” favourite, Tofu.  So, I cut the tofu into half, and then simply just put on top of the pork.  and cover the pan again.  Cook with slow fire, small fire.  Let it SLOW COOK. Another 10-15min.

l.  And it is done.  The sauce become a bit sticky.  Tofu is fully steam after 10-15min.  And the smell is nice.

m.  OK.  Cut the tofu, place nicely in the serving plates.  And there you go, the Japanese Onion Soya Pork.  My version.

n.  So, today, I also bought some Ikura (Fish eggs) to go with it.  And He loves it, and finish it all.

o. There are some other dish, but I think this is the only dish that the kids love it so much.

p.  You got to cook Japanese Rice to go with it.  You will see oily oily part, because those are the natural pork oil.  (Remember, we only use very thin layer of oil to slow cook the onion, that’s it).  And the meat will curl up.  You do not want to over cook this, as it will become harder to bite.  

Of course, you can use the same way to cook using mince pork.  Here is how the mince pork version looks like and mix it on top of the rice.  (those two are fish ball from the vegetable).

I cook this 3 times this week.  And he always take a very big plate of it.  My strong supporter at home.