obihiro style pork bowls

Back in 2006, when we visited Hokkaido, we stumbled upon Pancho, a shop that served buta don (pork bowl)

Sliced pork that was cooked with a sweet-salty sauce and fanned out on top of a bowl of rice.

The shop only had this on their menu with the price varying on the portion of pork you chose.

The shop has since relocated to a different address in Obihiro and still serves their pork bowls.

Since we haven't been anywhere due to the pandemic, I thought we could "travel" to Obihiro through dinner.

Pancho serves their pork bowls with green peas, I served mine with green onion.

Obihiro style pork bowl : makes 2 servings : adapted from the internet

300 grams thinly sliced pork belly, cut into about 2-inch width pieces

1/4 cup shoyu (soy sauce)

3 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons mirin (sweet rice wine)

4 tablespoons sake (rice wine)

green onion, sliced

Fan out the pieces out into a pan and cook at medium heat.

With paper towel, mop up the oil that comes out from the meat as it cooks.

Spoon out about 2 or 3 tablespoons of sauce and flip the meat to get it caramelized

Serve over rice, top with green onion

NOTES: Next time, I would use a little thicker cut of pork belly.

There was a lot of oil that came out when cooking, so have paper towels ready!

This recipe make quite a lot of sauce, so spooning out a little amount at a time while cooking was a good choice.

Once you spoon the sauce over the meat, stay close by, because the sauce can burn quickly!

I cooked the pork in two pans because I wanted to fan out the pieces, not having any of them overlapping or folding.

I've also used this sauce when cooking fried tofu, I think you could use this with chicken or beef too.