Published: · Last Modified: by Jeannette ·
You haven’t had a true melt-in-your-mouth pork belly experience until you’ve tried Grandma’s Steamed Lemongrass Pork With Shrimp Paste. A winning combination – lemongrass and shrimp paste – gives this dish an incredibly deep flavour full of fragrant fall apart pork.
Simple and easy, this is a recipe you can make using only one dish!
Grandma’s dinner spreads have always been out of this world, but her Steamed Lemongrass Pork with Shrimp Paste is one that excites us every single time.
You know you’ve got a winning recipe when the extended family asks you to make extra for them or when it’s the ONLY dish your friends request for when they come over!
But here’s why we love it so much:
Let me say it once more: melt-in-your-mouth pork belly.
Need I say more?
I’ve been to friends’ houses where their Mums would make this dish as a stir fry.
While enjoyable, I find that it makes the pork quite salty. You can only have a bit at a time. Plus, there’s very little sauce to go around!
But when I eat rice, I like to have it soaking up every drop of flavour. With Grandma’s steamed version, it’s a lot less salty, your rice can be SMOTHERED in lemongrass shrimp sauce and you can enjoy larger quantities of pork belly!
Shrimp paste is a popular thick sauce that stars in Southeast Asian cuisines. I won’t lie about the smell – it is really quite pungent, which is why we generally open all our kitchen windows when we use copious amounts of shrimp paste.
While it can be a scent that needs some getting used to, the flavour that it adds to homecooked dishes is unmatched.
It’s basically shrimp that has been dried in the sun then mixed with salt. From this, the shrimp break down while the mixture thickens. It is then ground into a paste and left to ferment until ready to be sold.
The ingredient list to this family favourite is so simple! If you’ve cooked many Asian dishes, you’ll likely have most of these on hand already!
Our lemongrass needs to be finely chopped and you can do it in one of two ways:
(1) Using a knife, cut off the bulb of the lemongrass, slice the stem thinly and chop it until it becomes fine.
(2) If you have a food processor, thinly slice the lemongrass then blitz it until it is fairly course. Food processors are much more powerful than chopping by hand, so make sure the lemongrass does not become too fine. We still want some lemongrass texture as we eat the pork belly.
Otherwise, you can buy frozen chopped lemongrass in the Asian section of the supermarket. Just let it thaw before use!
Use a sharp knife to remove the outer skin of the pork belly.
Make a slit between the meat and the skin, grab a hold of the skin and run the knife between the two parts, pulling the skin toward you as you separate the flesh from skin.
If your pork belly comes with bone, remove it by slicing across from just under the bone.
Hold the pork still with one hand (bone side up), turn the blade to the side and cut from right to left until the bone is detached.
Set up the steamer. The set up is identical to the way we cooked our Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Black Beans.
Meanwhile, cut the pork belly into 1 cm x 1/2 cm x 2 cm (1/2″ x 1/4″ x 1″) chunks.
Try to get both fat and meat layers in each piece so that when eaten, there’ll be a different texture from each part.
Put the pork belly, lemongrass, chilli, shrimp paste, sugar and chicken bouillon powder onto a steamable dish.
Mix all the contents until the pork belly is covered.
When the water is boiling on a high heat, put the dish into the steamer for 1 hour. Be careful not to burn yourself from the steam!
Tip: When steaming, use thin metal dishes. They’re steam-safe and help to cook the meat mush faster.
Serve hot with rice!
Love the melt-in-your-mouth pork belly experience? Here are the ones our family treasure:
You’ll have the best time eating these with a big bowl of steaming hot rice!
Lots of Love,
Jeannette
SHARE YOUR CREATION!
If you recreated this authentic recipe, I’d love to see it! Tag @wokandkin on Instagram with the hashtag #wokandkin! See you there!
WANT MORE HOME COOKED RECIPES?
Subscribe to our email list and be the first to get recipe updates as soon as they’re posted. You can also follow Wok & Kin on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter!
This sounds so flavorful! I just love lemongrass. 🙂
Thanks, Carrie!
My husband loves pork belly so I know he will devour this steamed lemongrass pork.
That’s great to hear, Kelly!
Just made a batch of this and the flavors are so good! I already love lemongrass, so when it’s mixed in with pork and the shrimp paste, it’s a winning dish.
This sounds really good. Lots of flavor packed in there. I love lemongrass too!
Such great flavors in this dish!
Thanks!
Oooo!! Wondering if this can me made in the instant pot?!
You certainly can! I would suggest cooking it on High Pressure for 20 minutes 🙂