It really feels so nice to.learn so much from your details esp how the.pork wont curl while cooking. My head.keeps.on agreeing to new things youre saying! Really 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 for you!! Great work!
This brought me back to when I lived in Obihiro! I still DREAM about Butadon!! (had it almost everyday when I was there! It was that good!!) Can't wait to try making it from your instructions! Thank you so much for posting this!! 😋
Made this tonight for dinner and it was incredibly delicious! And easy, too. Fortunately, with your excellent guidance, I have acquired all the right ingredients. Because the dish is so simple, it is crucial to have the best soy sauce, mirin, and sake. I used to try to get by with substitutes, but I have learned to love these flavors and I now know that there's no suitable replacement. It has made a huge difference! I'm so glad I waited to make this. I even have a kitchen torch now. You have been the best influence on my cooking!😃
Glad you enjoyed this Kathy! As you mentioned, Japanese food has so few ingredients, the quality of each ingredient has a larger share in the outcome. Hope you're having a good weekend!
@@NoRecipes We had a stunning Chanchan Yaki for lunch, made with silken tofu. Enjoyed the Red Bean soup dessert after. Delicious!💖 Hope your weekend is going well, too!
@@kathcares Yay I'm glad you like the red bean soup. It's called Oshiruko (or zenzai, depending on who you ask), and it's on my editorial calendar to make a video for this winter.
You could use a toaster oven to to broil or the broiler setting of a regular oven. Just make sure the rack is near the heating element or the meat will get overcooked by the time the glaze is caramelized.
I made this recipe for diner , it was awesome , im pretty sure this is what heaven taste like 😂😇 Your recipe was fantastic as usual, thank you Marc! Tomorrow i try your Karaage! 😁
@@NoRecipes I did indeed make it tonight and it was delicious. Wifey loved it too, arigato gozaimasu Matsumoto-San! We've been huge fans of yours and Mika's work on Bento Expo NHK for years.. it's one of the reasons why we first decided to holiday in Japan.
Been following your channel for a while! Just wanted to say your video and production quality is incredible. You and Just One Cookbook are my two favorite Asian and Japanese cooking channels! Keep up the great work and inspiration!
Thank you! My wife and I had butadon in Sapporo (in a center right by the JR central station) and it was mindblowingly good. I keep thinking about it and it looks just like this.
Can I substitute sake with water? I know it wont be perfect but i really want to cook this. Sake here cost 20€ and its just too expensive. Also how much sugar do i need if i only habe normal sugar?
Hi Jacob, you’re of course free to cook this how you like, but wine is not a good substitute for sake. Have a look at this article for an explanation norecipes.com/what-is-sake/ as for sugar, it’s a 1:1 substitute.
Great video and amazing recipe! Got a question though, I had some of the sauce leftover and decided to store it in a container and put it in the fridge, any idea how long it should last?
Thanks! As long as you didn't get pork juices in it, it should last indefinitely in the fridge (several months). If it's been contaminated with meat juices you'll want to use it up within a week.
Thanks Nadine! Sorry to hear it turned out tougher than you were expecting. There are a couple of possibilities that I can think of. 1) Pork belly can have a fair amount of connective tissue. When it's slowly cooked for a long time this breaks down into gelatin and gives it a melty texture, but prepared in this way it doesn't have enough time to undergo the process. It's possible that your pork belly just had more connective tissue than usual 2) Another possibility is that your pork belly didn't have enough fat. Pork belly has two kinds of fat. Intermuscular fat (seen as layers of fat between the meat layers) and Intramuscular fat (seen as white marbling in the meat layers). Whether you're braising or grilling like this it's always desirable to have a good amount of intramuscular fat because it keeps the meat portion tender long after the meat has reached a temperature that would normally be considered overcooked. As meat cooks and the proteins denature the muscle tissue contracts, forcing out the water in them this can make the meat tough and dry. The intramuscular fat takes much longer to render out and will keep the meat tender and moist. 3) Assuming your pork belly had a good amount of both intermuscular and intramuscular fat, the next possibility is that the slices got overcooked and you rendered out all of the fat , making the remaining meat tough. 4) Another possibility is that if you are used to braised pork belly, this preparation will seem tough by comparison because it's not cooked long enough to break down the connective tissue. I hope this helps you figure out what went wrong.
@@cookielover9025 Sure there are tasty things but the reality is that most northern countries have only had access to other seasonings than salt and grease and pepper since like 60 years ago. And very limited plants, animals, fish. So it's not even comparable to Japanese food that has a rich history with plentiful seasonings and incredible variety of fish for over 1000+ years. That on top of the fact that Japanese population has been much higher for longer so they had big cities and food trade with multiple countries and cultures and many local specialities while in the nordic countries we just had small villages and a few cows and chickens and little to no food trade with other countries. Rice was one of the few import foods. So it's like comparing a 5 year old child who has just learned to make simple foods from what he has at the house to a 60 year old professional chef who has learned from generations of other professional chefs. And 98% of our food we now eat are poorly copied from other countries because we have a simple taste from our history, so we have ruined all foreign exports from spaghetti to sushi :) We basically don't have local specialities because no one wants to eat the food we haf 50 years ago when there was no ingredients to make food. So there's very little argument to holding my country's food at a higher lever.
Pausing halfway though to say this guy's cadence is very slow and clear, but if you don't have patience playback at 1.5x speed makes things so much better while still being very clear.
It's brewed mirin from a small brewery Japan. Most mirin (even in Japan) is just alcohol with corn syrup and MSG added. That's why I usually opt for using sake and sugar in most of my recipes, but for this sauce the mirin is an integral flavor component.
Hey mark! This is a really interesting recipe! but I was wondering, is there a good substitute for Sake in this recipe? It's a bit difficult to get hold of in the UK
Thanks Gregsplays! Sake is added to the sauce for umami and flavor. You can use MSG as a substitute for the umami, but there is no suitable substitute for the flavor. Here's a place you can order sake online in the UK: www.japancentre.com/en/products/1423-ozeki-dry-sake You can also watch this video to learn more about why sake is so important in Japanese food: th-cam.com/video/C2p6MN4EVeA/w-d-xo.html
To stop the pork belly from curling make little vertical cuts on the top side this will stop the curling another tip will be to take the pork out of the fridge for 30 mins to reach room temp before cooking
Great idea on cutting some of the connective tissue to keep it from curling! As for taking it out of the fridge early, I don't recommend it as the higher initial temperature will cause the pork to be overcooked.
@@NoRecipes sorry but your wrong, first thing I was taught when I trained as a chef was the importance of letting meat or fish come upto room temp before cooking If you take any meat or fish straight from the fridge to a hot pan. The considerable temperature difference between the inside and exterior of your steak will cause the fibers to contract making the meat tighten up which then causes the meat to curl upwards, the juices will seep out causing a dry tasteless steak, the room temp meat actually speeds up the cooking process resulting in a juicy not burnt result.
@@Sanderly1820 The problem with rules is that there are always exceptions and it appears that you didn't learn the exceptions to this rule. First of all, using a room temperature steak does not "speed up to the cooking process", you're simply reducing the gap between the temperature of the meat when it enters the pan and the desired temperature when it's cooked. The smaller gap means you get there faster, but it is not speeding up the process of heat transfer. Second, these aren't steaks and should not be cooked like steaks. Look at the thickness of the meat, it's about 1/4 of an inch thick (much thinner than the 3/4-1-inch that a steak would be). This means they cook through much faster. With a thicker steak, you generally want to get it up to room temperature to shrink the temperature gap so the exterior doesn't burn before it's cooked through. Because these are much thinner, if you start with a smaller temperature gap between the meat and the desired temperature, the inside will be overcooked by the time you get the desired amount of browning on the outside. Regarding the curling, it is not caused by a temperature differential between internal and external, it's because of 2 factors 1) the fat and meat are different densities and have different protein structures so they contract at different rates when heated. The meat part cooks faster and shrinks faster. This will cause the belly to curl inwards towards the area with more meat. This is not a huge problem, and it could be alleviated by cutting slits into the meat side of the pork belly before slicing it as you mentioned). 2) the problematic curling that I describe at 5:09 is due to the temperature differential between the top surface and the bottom surface (not internal/external). This is easily fixed by flipping the meat over regularly so you don't develop a big temperature differential.
@@NoRecipes dude I'm not getting into a fight, but when I trained to be a chef in 1993 at the world famous resturant Le Gavroche London UK Any meat fish chicken or game was always took out and allowed to cone upto room temperature.before cooking , if you know anything about food you will know who I was trained by, I don't write comments without being right first. Sorry but you are wrong
Heyy, I've been binging your videos quite a lot lately☺and I really want to try your recipe. I was wondering abt the torch part. I don't have a torch, so I was wondering are they really necessary for this recipe? If so, do you have any another alternative? I didn't want to bother my parents on buying one since I'm not sure of how often I will use them. I hope you'll respond even though I know it's a quite late. Arigatou gozaimasu!😁
I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying my videos! The torch is a hack that caramelizes the glaze while adding just a bit of char to the pork. It also avoids having to grill it over charcoal, as it can be quite difficult to prevent it from burning due to the high fat content of the meat and the high sugar content of the glaze. But cooking it on a grill is one option. If you’re going to grill it you’ll probably want to look for a different video as the process is quite different from this. The other option is to blast it under a broiler at its highest setting instead of torching it at the end.
Hey Mark, whats your opinion on the difference between cooking sake and drinking sake for cooking? I can get either but the cooking sake lasts longer and is more economical since it isn't taxed as alcohol. Should I try and used only the drinking stuff or is it alright to use cooking sake? Thanks
So cooking sake is usually very low quality sake and it almost always has a ton of salt added to make it undrinkable (that's how they avoid liquor taxes). It also often includes other ingredients like MSG and preservatives. In terms of adding umami it does a good job, since cheaper sake tends to have more amino acids (either because of the additives or because the rice is polished less), but the salt makes it a no-go for me since it will make most recipes too salty (unless the recipe was written specifically for cooking sake). That's why I always use drinking sake for cooking. Since a lot of the aromatic compounds burn off when you cook it, there is no need to use the expensive stuff, and the cheap stuff actually tends to have more umami because of the lower polish ratio (lower polish = more protein = more amino acids when fermented).
@@NoRecipes I figured since you said basically the same thing about mirin for this recipe on your website but just wanted to be sure. Some recipe videos I watch say sake and some say cooking sake so I wanted your opinion on it. Thanks!
@@Thine_Reaper If a recipe specifically says "cooking sake", you're probably good to go, since they've presumably accounted for the extra salt. Also for regular sake that I use for cooking, I just keep it with my other condiments at room temperature it rarely sits there for more than a year, and while the aging does change the color and flavor profile (makes it more caramely and complex), it won't turn to vinegar like wine, so it's fine for cooking.
Thanks for the torch tip of adding more oxygen to the mix, I hated torches for years specifically because of the burnt taste of gas on the food. You never know enough.
Hi Eduardo, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! This method will work great with deboned whole skin-on chicken thighs (torch the skin-side). Thanks for letting me know how it went!
Welcome to the channel Ianne! If you don't have a torch, you can skip the step it will still taste great. If you have an oven with a broil mode, you can also try sticking the tray of pork right under the heating element in the broiler.
Thank you for another great recipe, will try as soon as I get a torch! I was told I should be using Hon mirin (as opposed to Aji), but can't find it in Canada. The lady at the Japanese store said they could not sell it, since it had alcohol in it, which is regulated in Canada...
You're welcome Mina! Although it literally means "real mirin", "Hon-mirin" is technically not a classification so there is no definition for what can go into it and what can't. Reading the ingredient label is your best bet in separating the good stuff from the bad stuff. Real mirin should only contain ingredients like Koji, water, rice, alcohol or Shochu. It should also be a caramel reddish brown (assuming it has no color additives).
Most Japanese dishes use some combination of soy sauce, sugar, sake, mirin, and dashi, so teriyaki sauce and the sauce for this Butadon are similar. The major difference is the balance of the ingredients. Teriyaki sauce is usually made in a 1:1:1 or 1:1:1:1 proportion of soy sauce, sake, sugar (and possibly mirin), which makes it sweeter than this sauce. As for Yakiniku sauce, that is a totally different sauce which includes garlic, ginger, onions, pureed fruit, sesame oil, etc.
You can still make it without a torch. The pork will be fully cooked when it comes out of the frying pan, so while it won't be quite a crispy around the edges it will still be delicious.
Ohh. Alright, Thank you sir! Btw, I’ve tried your chicken teriyaki tonight for dinner. My fam loved it! Thanks bigtime 👍💯 Next one up is this Butadon. 😃
Hi, I tried this recipie today with pork belly and pork neck. Very delicius, but I think I cooked the meat a little to long with to less fat. Next time I will use the skin seperately to add more fat. And I didn't clean up the pan for more roasted flavour :). Half of the meat I roasted with flame but I think there is no need to do so. Thx.
Hi Andrea, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! If you noticed the meat getting a little dried out, it could have to do with the amount of fat on your pork belly (both in total and intra-muscular marbling ). The fat and meat should be in roughly evenly layers, and the meat layers should also have some white marbling in it. The other possibility was that it was overcooked, in which case you can try and slice the pork a little thicker next time. I generally don't recommend using skin-on pork belly for this because it is not fried long enough to crisp the skin, which makes it pretty chewy. I hope that helps!
Hi John, it's skin off. The skin only works when you're cooking it for a long time (which breaks down the collagen and makes it tender), or you're hitting it with a very high temperature to crisp it. For this recipe, it would end up inedibly chewy.
Hi , mark now I open Butadon Shop. So it have a good sale. We have only Butadon Totiyakidon Gyudon 3-4 of type Menu. But easy to manage. GoodTime for Start.
Hi John, if you have an oven or a toaster oven with a broil mode, that will work. Otherwise you can skip the step. It is a nice touch, but it's not necessary since the pork is already fully cooked.
@@snake1625b I would not recommend using bacon as it will be too salty with the sauce. You could do it without the sauce, but then you just have fried bacon on rice.
I was hoping to try this recipe for myself soon, and was wondering how important it is to torch the pork at the end. Has anyone done this without that step? I'd rather not spend the extra money on a torch for a single dish.
I'm not sure what part of the Philippines you're in, but I know it is available in Manila. There is no good alternative for sake as it has a unique flavor and aroma. The main purpose of sake here though is to add umami to the sauce, so a small amount of MSG could be used to make up for that.
Hi Garou12, unless otherwise specified, all of my recipes calling for soy sauce (including this one) use Japanese dark soy sauce (similar to Chinese light soy sauce).
@@garou12 You're welcome! We also have light and dark soy sauce in Japan, but Japanese dark is closest to Chinese light soy sauce. It's not identical though so if you can find it I recommend picking up some Japanese soy sauce.
@@NoRecipes i was just at the regular supermarket here and all they had was the chinese ver. Will go try a specialty mart next time but thank you so much for clearing that up. I wanna try making my own butadon since im craving the excellent one i had in shimbashi and cant travel to japan atm thanks to the pandemic
To stop belly pork from curling get a pair of clean scissors and snip the skin , that stops the skin to contract and stay flat. This will work with any meat
Hi Willow, thanks for the tip, but I don't recommend using skin-on pork belly for this. The temperatures don't get hot enough to crisp the skin and it will end up chewy.
Thanks for the feedback Ivan. To be honest you're the first person to request having me eat on camera. I spend a lot of time in my videos covering technique so they're already on the long side, and adding scenes of me eating ends up making the even longer. I've done it a few times in the past and they haven't been watched very much because they aren't watched until the end (TH-cam prioritizes videos that are watched to the end in search).
@@NoRecipes I wish you could see how accurate I will be. it's only monday and I am starting to slowboil the shiitakes for 2 days before I will add kombu and bonitos. All shoppings are done 😊
@@NoRecipes yes I am aware, and no it's not a concern. My concern is the cost. In Japan I imagine soy sauce must be fairly cheap. But in Serbia where I live, it's very expensive. Like a liter of soy sauce is equal in price to 8 kilograma of regular kitchen salt.
😆I guess this all depends on where you live. In cities most people don’t have the outdoor space to have a grill, which makes owning a torch easier. You can adapt this recipe for a grill if you have one, just cook the pork on a hot grill, usually in Japan the meat is sandwiched between two mesh grills which are wired shut, this makes it easier to flip them all at once so you can control flare ups, then you just need to brush on the glaze a few times to finish.
Pork belly has plenty of grease left, and besides, the grease is not what has the flavor, it's the browned meat juices (a.k.a. fond) that you see clinging to the meat.
Hi Nic, sorry to hear it didn't turn out well for you. There are a couple of possibilities here. 1) How well marbled was the pork you used. Ideally you want to use pork belly that not only has uniform inter-muscular(between muscles) marbling, but also uniform intra-muscular marbling (inside the muscles themselves). If you look at the video around 1:55 you can see what I'm talking about. There are 3 layers of meat sandwiched between 3 layers of fat, and then inside each layer of meat you can see white marbling (which is fat). Since the meat itself is going to be well done, you need to the fat to ensure the pork is juicy. 2) If your pork belly did look like this, the other possibility is that you overcooked it. This could happen for a number of reasons. One possibility is that you cut the pork too thin, this would cause it to overcook by the time you pan fried it and then torched it. Another possibility is that your pan was not hot enough when the pork hit the pan, so by the time the pork got some browning at the edges, it was overcooked (it should be barely cooked though, or even a little rare at this point as it's going to get cooked twice more). Similarly the pan should be quite hot in the glazing step and the sauce should already be pretty thick and caramelized before you add the pork, otherwise it will take too long to glaze and your pork will get overcooked in this step.
I moved from Seattle to Mazatlán. My biggest sadness comes from the lack of Asian restaurants and ingredients. We have one store that carries Asian ingredients, but rice noodles and soy sauce seem to be their mainstay. I can't find xiaoxing wine, mirin, black vinegar, etc. Sad. Sad. Sad. At least they occasionally have gochujang and mushroom soy!
I love how this is filmed, high quality video with a professional voice over and plus entertaining. Subscribed.
Thanks Ashley, welcome to the channel! I hope your week is off to a good start!
You are a dangerous man. I made this for supper and I have found my new favourite dish. Delicious!
😆 Glad to hear you enjoyed it! If you care to live life on the edge, I have a lot of other temptations on here 😉
I made it with less soy sauce and sugar. My children loved this. How easy and delicious! Thank you so much.
I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed it!
Thanks for being so detailed with the recipe including showing us how to use the blot torch properly. It’s been really helpful for me!
You're welcome! I try to post a level of information that I would find useful if I were looking for a recipe.
Thank you for your recipe. I will make it tomor for him and the kids😊
You're welcome!
Just your description of the dish when you finished it near the end made my mouth water.
I like your style, video is very professional and food looks 🤤
Thank you!
Hey Marc! What a fantastic cook, you make it look so easy. I'm glad MapleCook turned me on to your channel. 👍👍
Hahahaha! My man, Ron!! I'm sitting here drooling at this, too!
@@Maplecook hell yeah!
Thanks man! Hope you had a good week!
@@NoRecipes Thanks, Marc! Sending you my positive energy, too! =)
It really feels so nice to.learn so much from your details esp how the.pork wont curl while cooking. My head.keeps.on agreeing to new things youre saying! Really 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 for you!! Great work!
You're welcome, Judy, I'm glad I could help!
This is a great video and recipe, ive been missing this forever! New sub!
Thanks, and welcome to the channel!
Wow just wow
Thanks 😀
Oh man! I've been looking for this recipe! You made my day! Thanks a million. Love this dish
Glad to hear I could help out, hope you enjoy it!
This brought me back to when I lived in Obihiro! I still DREAM about Butadon!! (had it almost everyday when I was there! It was that good!!)
Can't wait to try making it from your instructions! Thank you so much for posting this!! 😋
You're welcome, I hope you enjoy it!
Ok just cooked this. Thank you 10000/10 this is so good!
I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed this Jean! Thank you for taking the time to let me know!
I see you everytime during work lunch at bento expo show👍👍
Thanks for watching Bento Expo! 😀
Thank you for your recipe. It makes my husband go straight home and skip drinking with his buddies. LOL
😆 As someone who loves going out to drink with buddies, that's a high compliment. Thanks for stopping by to let me know👍🏽
This was the best thing i´ve ever cooked thank you so much for this recipe! Very wholesome video
Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
Love your enthusiasm so much!!!!
Thanks Naomi!
Made this tonight for dinner and it was incredibly delicious! And easy, too. Fortunately, with your excellent guidance, I have acquired all the right ingredients. Because the dish is so simple, it is crucial to have the best soy sauce, mirin, and sake. I used to try to get by with substitutes, but I have learned to love these flavors and I now know that there's no suitable replacement. It has made a huge difference! I'm so glad I waited to make this. I even have a kitchen torch now. You have been the best influence on my cooking!😃
Glad you enjoyed this Kathy! As you mentioned, Japanese food has so few ingredients, the quality of each ingredient has a larger share in the outcome. Hope you're having a good weekend!
@@NoRecipes We had a stunning Chanchan Yaki for lunch, made with silken tofu. Enjoyed the Red Bean soup dessert after. Delicious!💖 Hope your weekend is going well, too!
@@kathcares Yay I'm glad you like the red bean soup. It's called Oshiruko (or zenzai, depending on who you ask), and it's on my editorial calendar to make a video for this winter.
Food is life ❤️ would love to try this out!!
I couldn't agree more. I hope you enjoy it 😀
This looks delicious. How can I caramelize the glazed pork without a kitchen torch?
You could use a toaster oven to to broil or the broiler setting of a regular oven. Just make sure the rack is near the heating element or the meat will get overcooked by the time the glaze is caramelized.
@@NoRecipes Thank you!
gonna give this a try! thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome Domingo, I hope you enjoy it!
Wow you’re very clear concise positive and well articulated. Nice Content, Subscribed.
Thanks QtCq, welcome to the channel!
I made this recipe for diner , it was awesome , im pretty sure this is what heaven taste like 😂😇 Your recipe was fantastic as usual, thank you Marc! Tomorrow i try your Karaage! 😁
I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed this! Hope the karaage went well!
Great video dude
Thanks!
Thanks Mark, looks amazing! I'll be making this tonight.. I really miss Japan :(
You're welcome Daniel, I hope you enjoy it!
@@NoRecipes I did indeed make it tonight and it was delicious. Wifey loved it too, arigato gozaimasu Matsumoto-San! We've been huge fans of yours and Mika's work on Bento Expo NHK for years.. it's one of the reasons why we first decided to holiday in Japan.
@@QldChickenPuncher I'm glad to hear it, thanks for reporting back! Also, thanks for watching Bento Expo! I'll let Maki know😀
@@NoRecipes gomenmasai! I did mean Maki ❤️
Absolutely Amazing ❤️❤️
Thanks man!
Awesome channel!
Thanks😊
I love your recipes sir 美味しいそう
Thank you! 😀
about time, i just order my iberico pork. OMG. 😘👌 thanks.
I think this would be amazing with iberico. Hope you enjoy it!
BUTADONMAN!!
Been following your channel for a while! Just wanted to say your video and production quality is incredible. You and Just One Cookbook are my two favorite Asian and Japanese cooking channels! Keep up the great work and inspiration!
Thanks for dropping by to leave a comment! It's always good to hear that someone is noticing the extra effort I put into the production😄
Good mood guaranteed after your videos! Thank you
Thanks Vlladimir!
Thank you! My wife and I had butadon in Sapporo (in a center right by the JR central station) and it was mindblowingly good. I keep thinking about it and it looks just like this.
You're welcome! I think I know which shop you're talking about (I used to live in Sapporo). Hope this is able to bring back some memories!
this is so beautifully presented.......
Thank you!
Gonna make at home... Thanks for the recipe
You're welcome, I hope you enjoy it!
Excellent video. Btw, where can you get the fire-proof wire rack and tray?
Thanks! I got that particular rack at Daiso (100 yen shop), but you can use any non-coated metal cooling rack.
Can I substitute sake with water? I know it wont be perfect but i really want to cook this. Sake here cost 20€ and its just too expensive. Also how much sugar do i need if i only habe normal sugar?
Hi Jacob, you’re of course free to cook this how you like, but wine is not a good substitute for sake. Have a look at this article for an explanation norecipes.com/what-is-sake/ as for sugar, it’s a 1:1 substitute.
Great video and amazing recipe! Got a question though, I had some of the sauce leftover and decided to store it in a container and put it in the fridge, any idea how long it should last?
Thanks! As long as you didn't get pork juices in it, it should last indefinitely in the fridge (several months). If it's been contaminated with meat juices you'll want to use it up within a week.
Great video! I'm also a big fan of Bento Expo.
Thank you, and thanks for watching Bento Expo!
Amazing dish. Not sure why my pork belly turned out tough. How can i make it soft?
Thanks Nadine! Sorry to hear it turned out tougher than you were expecting. There are a couple of possibilities that I can think of. 1) Pork belly can have a fair amount of connective tissue. When it's slowly cooked for a long time this breaks down into gelatin and gives it a melty texture, but prepared in this way it doesn't have enough time to undergo the process. It's possible that your pork belly just had more connective tissue than usual 2) Another possibility is that your pork belly didn't have enough fat. Pork belly has two kinds of fat. Intermuscular fat (seen as layers of fat between the meat layers) and Intramuscular fat (seen as white marbling in the meat layers). Whether you're braising or grilling like this it's always desirable to have a good amount of intramuscular fat because it keeps the meat portion tender long after the meat has reached a temperature that would normally be considered overcooked. As meat cooks and the proteins denature the muscle tissue contracts, forcing out the water in them this can make the meat tough and dry. The intramuscular fat takes much longer to render out and will keep the meat tender and moist. 3) Assuming your pork belly had a good amount of both intermuscular and intramuscular fat, the next possibility is that the slices got overcooked and you rendered out all of the fat , making the remaining meat tough. 4) Another possibility is that if you are used to braised pork belly, this preparation will seem tough by comparison because it's not cooked long enough to break down the connective tissue. I hope this helps you figure out what went wrong.
❤️ it!! 😋😋👍🙏🏼
Wow. This channel is a lifesaver for me. My country has the worst food :)
Welcome to the channel! I hope you can help you learn some new dishes and cook at home more😀
Don’t say that. You need to learn more about your country’s couzines. And you’ll find something you’d like.
@@cookielover9025 Sure there are tasty things but the reality is that most northern countries have only had access to other seasonings than salt and grease and pepper since like 60 years ago. And very limited plants, animals, fish.
So it's not even comparable to Japanese food that has a rich history with plentiful seasonings and incredible variety of fish for over 1000+ years.
That on top of the fact that Japanese population has been much higher for longer so they had big cities and food trade with multiple countries and cultures and many local specialities while in the nordic countries we just had small villages and a few cows and chickens and little to no food trade with other countries. Rice was one of the few import foods.
So it's like comparing a 5 year old child who has just learned to make simple foods from what he has at the house to a 60 year old professional chef who has learned from generations of other professional chefs.
And 98% of our food we now eat are poorly copied from other countries because we have a simple taste from our history, so we have ruined all foreign exports from spaghetti to sushi :)
We basically don't have local specialities because no one wants to eat the food we haf 50 years ago when there was no ingredients to make food.
So there's very little argument to holding my country's food at a higher lever.
Pausing halfway though to say this guy's cadence is very slow and clear, but if you don't have patience playback at 1.5x speed makes things so much better while still being very clear.
Good tip! About a third of my audience are non-english speakers so the cadence is for them. I tend to watch most videos at 1.75 or 2x as well.
What kind of mirin are you using? yours looks slightly darker than the super market stuff here.
It's brewed mirin from a small brewery Japan. Most mirin (even in Japan) is just alcohol with corn syrup and MSG added. That's why I usually opt for using sake and sugar in most of my recipes, but for this sauce the mirin is an integral flavor component.
Hey mark! This is a really interesting recipe! but I was wondering, is there a good substitute for Sake in this recipe? It's a bit difficult to get hold of in the UK
Thanks Gregsplays! Sake is added to the sauce for umami and flavor. You can use MSG as a substitute for the umami, but there is no suitable substitute for the flavor. Here's a place you can order sake online in the UK: www.japancentre.com/en/products/1423-ozeki-dry-sake You can also watch this video to learn more about why sake is so important in Japanese food: th-cam.com/video/C2p6MN4EVeA/w-d-xo.html
To stop the pork belly from curling make little vertical cuts on the top side this will stop the curling another tip will be to take the pork out of the fridge for 30 mins to reach room temp before cooking
Great idea on cutting some of the connective tissue to keep it from curling! As for taking it out of the fridge early, I don't recommend it as the higher initial temperature will cause the pork to be overcooked.
@@NoRecipes sorry but your wrong, first thing I was taught when I trained as a chef was the importance of letting meat or fish come upto room temp before cooking
If you take any meat or fish straight from the fridge to a hot pan. The considerable temperature difference between the inside and exterior of your steak will cause the fibers to contract making the meat tighten up which then causes the meat to curl upwards, the juices will seep out causing a dry tasteless steak, the room temp meat actually speeds up the cooking process resulting in a juicy not burnt result.
@@Sanderly1820 The problem with rules is that there are always exceptions and it appears that you didn't learn the exceptions to this rule. First of all, using a room temperature steak does not "speed up to the cooking process", you're simply reducing the gap between the temperature of the meat when it enters the pan and the desired temperature when it's cooked. The smaller gap means you get there faster, but it is not speeding up the process of heat transfer.
Second, these aren't steaks and should not be cooked like steaks. Look at the thickness of the meat, it's about 1/4 of an inch thick (much thinner than the 3/4-1-inch that a steak would be). This means they cook through much faster. With a thicker steak, you generally want to get it up to room temperature to shrink the temperature gap so the exterior doesn't burn before it's cooked through. Because these are much thinner, if you start with a smaller temperature gap between the meat and the desired temperature, the inside will be overcooked by the time you get the desired amount of browning on the outside.
Regarding the curling, it is not caused by a temperature differential between internal and external, it's because of 2 factors 1) the fat and meat are different densities and have different protein structures so they contract at different rates when heated. The meat part cooks faster and shrinks faster. This will cause the belly to curl inwards towards the area with more meat. This is not a huge problem, and it could be alleviated by cutting slits into the meat side of the pork belly before slicing it as you mentioned). 2) the problematic curling that I describe at 5:09 is due to the temperature differential between the top surface and the bottom surface (not internal/external). This is easily fixed by flipping the meat over regularly so you don't develop a big temperature differential.
@@NoRecipes dude I'm not getting into a fight, but when I trained to be a chef in 1993 at the world famous resturant Le Gavroche London UK
Any meat fish chicken or game was always took out and allowed to cone upto room temperature.before cooking , if you know anything about food you will know who I was trained by, I don't write comments without being right first. Sorry but you are wrong
@@Sanderly1820 No worries, I'm here to help when you're ready to learn.
Oh my, I feel hungry now😄
😀
Heyy, I've been binging your videos quite a lot lately☺and I really want to try your recipe. I was wondering abt the torch part. I don't have a torch, so I was wondering are they really necessary for this recipe? If so, do you have any another alternative? I didn't want to bother my parents on buying one since I'm not sure of how often I will use them. I hope you'll respond even though I know it's a quite late. Arigatou gozaimasu!😁
I think you could use a charcoal grill, would add even more flavour to the dish
I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying my videos! The torch is a hack that caramelizes the glaze while adding just a bit of char to the pork. It also avoids having to grill it over charcoal, as it can be quite difficult to prevent it from burning due to the high fat content of the meat and the high sugar content of the glaze. But cooking it on a grill is one option. If you’re going to grill it you’ll probably want to look for a different video as the process is quite different from this. The other option is to blast it under a broiler at its highest setting instead of torching it at the end.
Thankyou for the respond☺ I'll try using these other method. I hope I can get it as good! Thankyou once again
big thumps up for u man, thanks for sharing
Thanks Hải!
Hey Mark, whats your opinion on the difference between cooking sake and drinking sake for cooking? I can get either but the cooking sake lasts longer and is more economical since it isn't taxed as alcohol. Should I try and used only the drinking stuff or is it alright to use cooking sake? Thanks
So cooking sake is usually very low quality sake and it almost always has a ton of salt added to make it undrinkable (that's how they avoid liquor taxes). It also often includes other ingredients like MSG and preservatives. In terms of adding umami it does a good job, since cheaper sake tends to have more amino acids (either because of the additives or because the rice is polished less), but the salt makes it a no-go for me since it will make most recipes too salty (unless the recipe was written specifically for cooking sake). That's why I always use drinking sake for cooking. Since a lot of the aromatic compounds burn off when you cook it, there is no need to use the expensive stuff, and the cheap stuff actually tends to have more umami because of the lower polish ratio (lower polish = more protein = more amino acids when fermented).
@@NoRecipes I figured since you said basically the same thing about mirin for this recipe on your website but just wanted to be sure. Some recipe videos I watch say sake and some say cooking sake so I wanted your opinion on it. Thanks!
@@Thine_Reaper If a recipe specifically says "cooking sake", you're probably good to go, since they've presumably accounted for the extra salt. Also for regular sake that I use for cooking, I just keep it with my other condiments at room temperature it rarely sits there for more than a year, and while the aging does change the color and flavor profile (makes it more caramely and complex), it won't turn to vinegar like wine, so it's fine for cooking.
@@NoRecipes Good to know, thanks again Mark.
I got the Japanese citizen after to complete successfully this recipe, LOL.
🤣
At first I thought you were the pen pineapple apple pen guy. Anyway thank you for the recipe.
😆 you're welcome!
Thanks for the torch tip of adding more oxygen to the mix, I hated torches for years specifically because of the burnt taste of gas on the food. You never know enough.
I went for years thinking the same thing as well until someone showed me what I was doing wrong. Glad I could pass the tip on.
All need is the potato salad !
I have a potato salad recipe too! th-cam.com/video/OnumR04V7Ls/w-d-xo.html
Added some sesame and salt furikake to it besides the scallions, ohhhhh man does it taste good, gonna try it with chicken next time
Hi Eduardo, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! This method will work great with deboned whole skin-on chicken thighs (torch the skin-side). Thanks for letting me know how it went!
Can i use teriyaki sos and replace with chicken?
You're certainly free to do what you like, but what you're describing is a different dish: th-cam.com/video/rrjvrJhO1tU/w-d-xo.html
How can I do this if I don’t own a torch? I subscribed btw!! ☺️
Welcome to the channel Ianne! If you don't have a torch, you can skip the step it will still taste great. If you have an oven with a broil mode, you can also try sticking the tray of pork right under the heating element in the broiler.
@@NoRecipes thanks for replying!!!! one of the few people who does.
ill try this one and ill let you know! ☺️
@@iannebv6091 You're welcome! I hope you enjoy it!
Thank you for another great recipe, will try as soon as I get a torch! I was told I should be using Hon mirin (as opposed to Aji), but can't find it in Canada. The lady at the Japanese store said they could not sell it, since it had alcohol in it, which is regulated in Canada...
You're welcome Mina! Although it literally means "real mirin", "Hon-mirin" is technically not a classification so there is no definition for what can go into it and what can't. Reading the ingredient label is your best bet in separating the good stuff from the bad stuff. Real mirin should only contain ingredients like Koji, water, rice, alcohol or Shochu. It should also be a caramel reddish brown (assuming it has no color additives).
@@NoRecipes Thank you! This is really helpful!
Hi, mark I need to know about sauce Terriyaki Vs Yakiniku (butadon). What different. or same mother ssuce but call follow by menu. That I think.
Most Japanese dishes use some combination of soy sauce, sugar, sake, mirin, and dashi, so teriyaki sauce and the sauce for this Butadon are similar. The major difference is the balance of the ingredients. Teriyaki sauce is usually made in a 1:1:1 or 1:1:1:1 proportion of soy sauce, sake, sugar (and possibly mirin), which makes it sweeter than this sauce. As for Yakiniku sauce, that is a totally different sauce which includes garlic, ginger, onions, pureed fruit, sesame oil, etc.
@@NoRecipes Oh..yeah Ok, All think I get konw and understand. Thank You, The Mark Master of Japanese Food. HI 👍👍👍
Aww would really love to try this but got no torch at home 😭 this looks reallyyy gooood 💯👍
You can still make it without a torch. The pork will be fully cooked when it comes out of the frying pan, so while it won't be quite a crispy around the edges it will still be delicious.
Ohh. Alright, Thank you sir! Btw, I’ve tried your chicken teriyaki tonight for dinner. My fam loved it! Thanks bigtime 👍💯
Next one up is this Butadon. 😃
Hi, I tried this recipie today with pork belly and pork neck. Very delicius, but I think I cooked the meat a little to long with to less fat. Next time I will use the skin seperately to add more fat. And I didn't clean up the pan for more roasted flavour :). Half of the meat I roasted with flame but I think there is no need to do so. Thx.
Hi Andrea, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! If you noticed the meat getting a little dried out, it could have to do with the amount of fat on your pork belly (both in total and intra-muscular marbling ). The fat and meat should be in roughly evenly layers, and the meat layers should also have some white marbling in it. The other possibility was that it was overcooked, in which case you can try and slice the pork a little thicker next time. I generally don't recommend using skin-on pork belly for this because it is not fried long enough to crisp the skin, which makes it pretty chewy. I hope that helps!
Did the pork belly you used in this have the skin on it?
Hi John, it's skin off. The skin only works when you're cooking it for a long time (which breaks down the collagen and makes it tender), or you're hitting it with a very high temperature to crisp it. For this recipe, it would end up inedibly chewy.
That looks delicious, and I have to get rid of some pork belly anyway. I think I'll try this very soon :)
I hope you enjoy it!
Hi , mark now I open Butadon Shop. So it have a good sale. We have only Butadon Totiyakidon Gyudon 3-4 of type Menu. But easy to manage. GoodTime for Start.
Wow, congratulations, that's awesome!
What do I do if I don't have a blow torch
Hi John, if you have an oven or a toaster oven with a broil mode, that will work. Otherwise you can skip the step. It is a nice touch, but it's not necessary since the pork is already fully cooked.
@@NoRecipes ok thanks. Another question, can regular become be substituted for this recipe
@@snake1625b I think you had an autocorrect error, what did you mean by "become"
@@NoRecipes yes my phone autocorrected bacon to become, sorry
@@snake1625b I would not recommend using bacon as it will be too salty with the sauce. You could do it without the sauce, but then you just have fried bacon on rice.
coll
This looks insanely delicious! Would it be possible to consider making croquettes? I love those little potato cakes ^^
Thanks Ethan! I actually have Korokke (Japanese-style croquettes) on my list of recipes to make, so it should be coming up soon 😉
I was hoping to try this recipe for myself soon, and was wondering how important it is to torch the pork at the end. Has anyone done this without that step? I'd rather not spend the extra money on a torch for a single dish.
The torching is not necessary, but it crisps the edges of the meat and caramelizes the glaze.
We don't have sake here what alternative can we use 🇵🇭
I'm not sure what part of the Philippines you're in, but I know it is available in Manila. There is no good alternative for sake as it has a unique flavor and aroma. The main purpose of sake here though is to add umami to the sauce, so a small amount of MSG could be used to make up for that.
we are missing obihiro
question re soy sauce: is it light soy sauce or dark soy sauce?
Hi Garou12, unless otherwise specified, all of my recipes calling for soy sauce (including this one) use Japanese dark soy sauce (similar to Chinese light soy sauce).
@@NoRecipes yea im used to chinese cooking so i was looking at the soy sauce and i kept wondering if it was light or dark. Thanks for the answer!
@@garou12 You're welcome! We also have light and dark soy sauce in Japan, but Japanese dark is closest to Chinese light soy sauce. It's not identical though so if you can find it I recommend picking up some Japanese soy sauce.
@@NoRecipes i was just at the regular supermarket here and all they had was the chinese ver. Will go try a specialty mart next time but thank you so much for clearing that up. I wanna try making my own butadon since im craving the excellent one i had in shimbashi and cant travel to japan atm thanks to the pandemic
Arigato Gosaimusu
You're welcome!
Gostaria de saber da receita toda abençoe sou Jairo do Brasil
Hi Jairo, there's a link to the full recipe in the description.
So I didn't have scallions and used broccoli instead; it was crazy good. I hope I didn't commit a food crime with this substitution 😂😂😂
Sound like a healthy way to balance out the pork! Nothing criminal about that😆
Instead of scallions on top try it with raw avocado instead. The creamy flavor is delicious.
Great idea!
To stop belly pork from curling get a pair of clean scissors and snip the skin , that stops the skin to contract and stay flat. This will work with any meat
Hi Willow, thanks for the tip, but I don't recommend using skin-on pork belly for this. The temperatures don't get hot enough to crisp the skin and it will end up chewy.
What if I don’t have a torch?
Hi Robert, you can skip the torching step, it will still be delicious.
Op boltay 🤩
Ok
Taste it bro
Thanks for the feedback Ivan. To be honest you're the first person to request having me eat on camera. I spend a lot of time in my videos covering technique so they're already on the long side, and adding scenes of me eating ends up making the even longer. I've done it a few times in the past and they haven't been watched very much because they aren't watched until the end (TH-cam prioritizes videos that are watched to the end in search).
ohhhhhh lord, you are so evil, this is divine! respect
😄Thanks!
@@NoRecipes You have caused a diner party with 7 of your dishes at once. This friday it will happen 😊
@@joyfullness1895 Awesome! Good luck, and let lee know how it goes!
@@NoRecipes I wish you could see how accurate I will be. it's only monday and I am starting to slowboil the shiitakes for 2 days before I will add kombu and bonitos. All shoppings are done 😊
@@NoRecipes oh I will. 😊
Great recipe but who seriously has a kitchen torch?
Thanks JC, you can also use a broiler/grill/toaster oven/ etc. The idea is to hit it with high heat to caramelize the glaze.
:o I always wince at the amount of soy sauce the Japanese use.
The traditional Japanese diet has its upsides but it's definitely not low sodium if that's a concern for you.
@@NoRecipes yes I am aware, and no it's not a concern. My concern is the cost. In Japan I imagine soy sauce must be fairly cheap. But in Serbia where I live, it's very expensive. Like a liter of soy sauce is equal in price to 8 kilograma of regular kitchen salt.
@@Dominik189 Ahhh I hadn't even considered that. Yea a liter of soy sauce here is about the same price as a kilogram of salt.
So you don’t need a grill but you need a torch
😆I guess this all depends on where you live. In cities most people don’t have the outdoor space to have a grill, which makes owning a torch easier. You can adapt this recipe for a grill if you have one, just cook the pork on a hot grill, usually in Japan the meat is sandwiched between two mesh grills which are wired shut, this makes it easier to flip them all at once so you can control flare ups, then you just need to brush on the glaze a few times to finish.
Does it come with an ambulance 🚑 ?
😆A good deal of fat does render out from the pork belly, but this is definitely not diet food.
@@NoRecipes
My mirin has corn syrup and salt in it 😭
Unfortunately most mirin is like that. If you're in the US, there's a brand called Eden there that makes real mirin.
I'll try that next time!
The grease that you wipe with the tissue is all the good flavors your missing..
Pork belly has plenty of grease left, and besides, the grease is not what has the flavor, it's the browned meat juices (a.k.a. fond) that you see clinging to the meat.
dry as ever.. nope.. no gud
Hi Nic, sorry to hear it didn't turn out well for you. There are a couple of possibilities here. 1) How well marbled was the pork you used. Ideally you want to use pork belly that not only has uniform inter-muscular(between muscles) marbling, but also uniform intra-muscular marbling (inside the muscles themselves). If you look at the video around 1:55 you can see what I'm talking about. There are 3 layers of meat sandwiched between 3 layers of fat, and then inside each layer of meat you can see white marbling (which is fat). Since the meat itself is going to be well done, you need to the fat to ensure the pork is juicy. 2) If your pork belly did look like this, the other possibility is that you overcooked it. This could happen for a number of reasons. One possibility is that you cut the pork too thin, this would cause it to overcook by the time you pan fried it and then torched it. Another possibility is that your pan was not hot enough when the pork hit the pan, so by the time the pork got some browning at the edges, it was overcooked (it should be barely cooked though, or even a little rare at this point as it's going to get cooked twice more). Similarly the pan should be quite hot in the glazing step and the sauce should already be pretty thick and caramelized before you add the pork, otherwise it will take too long to glaze and your pork will get overcooked in this step.
I moved from Seattle to Mazatlán. My biggest sadness comes from the lack of Asian restaurants and ingredients. We have one store that carries Asian ingredients, but rice noodles and soy sauce seem to be their mainstay. I can't find xiaoxing wine, mirin, black vinegar, etc. Sad. Sad. Sad. At least they occasionally have gochujang and mushroom soy!
Hi Brett, if you can get sake, you can mix 2 parts sake with 1 part sugar to get a suitable substitute.
@@NoRecipes Thanks for the tip ... I haven't seen sake either, but I'll add it to the list and keep an eye out for it!
Look for Toyo Foods or Oriental Market House, they carry a variety of options for asian cuisine!
@@nidiaa.6831 Toyo Is where I shop, but they don't have much, and what they have one week, they won't have the next!