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Rafute (Pork Belly Braised in Awamori and Black Sugar)

Name: Rafute (Pork Belly Braised in Awamori and Black Sugar)
Prep time: 2 h 50 min
Total time: 3 h 50 min
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: pork belly — 1000 g; water — 2000 g; fresh ginger — 40 g; green onion — 80 g; awamori — 400 g; katsuo dashi — 300 g; kokuto — 80 g; soy sauce — 100 g; mirin — 30 g; karashi — 5 g

Rafute (Pork Belly Braised in Awamori and Black Sugar) reads umami 8.7, richness 7.6 and salinity 5.1 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Japanese main, about 3 hr 50 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

Umami & Savory — 9.5 / 10
Sweet & Fruity — 4.9 / 10
Sour & Bright — 0.7 / 10
Bitter & Earthy — 2.4 / 10
Rich & Fat — 7.8 / 10
Aromatic & Spice — 4.1 / 10

The measured notes (of 18)

Umami 8.7 · Richness 7.6 · Salinity 5.1 · Sweetness 4.9 · Allium 3.8 · Funk & Ferment 3.1 · Warm Spice 2.3 · Smoke 2.0 · Earthy 1.6 · Herbaceous 1.5 · Bitterness 0.8 · Sourness 0.7 · Nutty 0.7

What's in it (10)

pork belly — 1000 g
water — 2000 g
fresh ginger — 40 g
green onion — 80 g
awamori — 400 g
katsuo dashi — 300 g
kokuto — 80 g
soy sauce — 100 g
mirin — 30 g
karashi — 5 g

Time & effort: about 3 hr 50 min (2 hr 50 min active) · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 132.3 kcal, 2.6 g protein, 13.2 g fat, 0.8 g carbs

Dietary: Contains meat · Contains seafood — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (7 steps)

Put the belly in a pot with the water, ginger and negi tops, bring to a boil and skim hard, then simmer, half covered, for 60 minutes. Lift the meat out and let it cool completely in the poaching liquid if you have time, or on a plate if you do not. Chill it if you can: cold pork belly cuts cleanly into cubes, warm belly tears.
Discard the poaching liquid, which will be very fatty, and cut the belly into 4 cm cubes, each with its layer of skin still attached. The skin is not optional. Rafute is judged on the texture of that gelatinous layer, and a skinless belly gives you something else entirely.
Put the cubes in a clean heavy pot with the awamori and dashi and bring to a simmer. Awamori is distilled from long-grain Thai rice with black koji and is peculiar to Okinawa; shochu is the closest stand-in, but the finished dish will be a shade less floral.
Add the kokuto and simmer with a drop lid for 45 minutes, turning the cubes once or twice. Kokuto is unrefined cane sugar pressed and boiled whole, mineral-tasting and faintly bitter, and it gives rafute its near-black colour.
Add the soy sauce and mirin and simmer 40 to 45 minutes more, until a chopstick pushes through a cube with no resistance and the liquid has reduced to a thick dark syrup barely covering the bottom of the pot. Baste often in the last 10 minutes.
Serve two or three cubes per person with a dab of karashi and some of the syrup, with rice alongside. Rafute is court cooking that became festival food, and it belongs to the pork-and-kombu axis that runs through everything Okinawan; the same braise, with kombu knots added in the last half hour, becomes kubu irichi.
Substitutions: shochu can stand in for the awamori; dark muscovado can stand in for the kokuto.

Dishes with a similar flavor shape

Babi Pongteh (Braised Pork with Fermented Soybean and Bamboo Shoots) — Peranakan
Red-Braised Pork Belly (红烧肉) — Chinese
Shanghai Red-Braised Pork Belly (Hong Shao Rou) — Chinese · Jiangnan
Risi e Bisi — Italian · Venice
Guinness Beef Stew with Pearl Onions — Irish

Keep reading: what umami, richness, salinity mean in the flavor lexicon · the world's cuisines, by flavor.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.