Pork Belly, the Secret to a Long Life

This recipe was first published in 2014 and republished in 2026. It has new photos, more info and instructions, a slightly altered recipe and new ideas for variations.

I read once that when Sichuan chefs are asked to choose their favorite among all of the cuisine’s iconic dishes, they choose the simple, homestyle twice-cooked pork (huíguō ròu, 回锅肉). I think I believe that due to how many times the dish has appeared at the table over the years when I’ve been dining with a Sichuan native. Fuchsia Dunlop calls it “the most profoundly loved of all local dishes.”

Huiguo ruo is the most famous dish in the jiachang wei, or homestyle flavor profile, one of the 20-plus fuhe wei, or complex flavors of Sichuan cuisine that make it so fantastically diverse and interesting. Jiachang wei is built mainly around doubanjiang and soy sauce, and, like its name says, is employed widely in the Sichuan home kitchen to make a quick stir-fry or a simple braise of meat with bits of vegetables or aromatics.

I’ve been making twice-cooked pork in my home kitchen since before I started this blog in 2014, and though it’s actually quite easy to make, it challenged me more than any other dish when I was first learning to cook Sichuan food in my self-styled Chengdu Challenge. I had to test it so many times that “twice-cooked pork” became dozen-times-cooked pork before I got it right. But just as I did, I was rewarded with a Chinese news story [no longer live] about Sichuan’s oldest living resident, a 117-year-old woman who attributed her longevity to three meals a day of huiguo rou.

Pork rump or belly and Pixian doubanjiang is really all it takes to make one of the great dishes of all time, in any cuisine—a combination of fatty pork with a sauce of intense umami and mild heat. But you have to have both of these specific ingredients. Do not make huiguo rou if you do not. But if you do, it will taste very much like it does in restaurants in Chengdu (and good ones in the U.S.). If you don’t, it will not, which perhaps explains why it is not quite as popular outside Sichuan as it is within.

How to Choose and Prep Pork for Huiguo Rou

My problem was not following the rule; I had the doubanjiang from Pixian, of course, but as for the pork, I learned the hard way by trying various cuts of pork that were either too fat or too lean before finding the perfect belly. I will save you that trouble and just report that pork loin and pork shoulder do not work for twice-cooked pork because they do not have the required layer of fat in every bite.

The China-published cookbook I was following back then actually called for a specific cut of pork rump, which is the cut they use in Sichuan, with the 50/50 lean-to-fat ratio this dish is meant to have. But that’s not a cut you easily find for sale in the U.S., since the rump is used for ham here. Pork belly is the cut that is generally used, but the key here is finding the right proportion of fat to lean meat, as pork bellies vary widely.

I’ve had my best luck finding an appropriate pork belly at Chinese markets and, of all places, Costco. The ideal belly will have the skin attached and have several layers of intermixed fat and lean meat. That renders just the right amount of oil to make a sauce but leaves big swaths of toothsome lean pork amid the succulent fat. When you shop for pork bellies, just sort through them until you find ones with the fat-lean ratio that suits you.

For most homestyle dishes, raw slivers of lean pork, chicken or beef are cooked once, by simply stir-frying them in the sauce. For twice cooked pork, made with a fattier cut, the tricky part is remembering to do the first round of cooking in advance.

The belly is simmered in boiling water until it’s just cooked through. If your pork belly came in one piece, that should take about 20 minutes; if it is cut in thinner strips, it may take less time. Three-quarters of a pound is plenty for this recipe, but when I have extra I usually cut it into one-dish portions, boil them all at once and freeze the ones I don’t use for future dishes of quickly made huiguo rou.

The key to creating the right texture in twice-cooked pork is making sure your pork is cut properly. Each slice should have skin (if your belly has it), layers of fat and layers of meat. Whether you retain the very bottom layer of muscly meat is up to you; I sometimes trim it down or off. Most importantly, the slices should be quite thin, around 1/8 inch or less. Thick slices will not cook quickly and just won’t taste right.

If your pork belly is in one wide piece, you can just slice it thinly and then cut into pieces about 2-2.5 inches long. If it is in strips that are not wide enough to get good slices, you will have to cut the strips into sections and then cut each section horizontally, from right to left (if you’re right-handed) into thin slices. Use a very sharp knife and be very careful.

If it is too difficult to cut thinly, freeze it for an hour or two, which makes it much easier.

Must-Have Pantry Ingredients for Classic Twice-Cooked Pork

The easy part of huiguo rou is the stuff straight out of Sichuan, the Pixian chili bean paste (doubanjiang) and sweet wheat paste (tian mian jiang). I did fib a bit when I said you only need the doubanjiang, because you also need sweet wheat paste. But once you’ve got these in your pantry, you’ve always got on hand the exact flavor combo you need for this classic dish. If you want to gild the belly, you can also throw in some fermented soybeans (douchi), which many Sichuan cooks do, and which I do because we love douchi. And, of course, Sichuan soy sauce, brings it all home.

And there should be no substitution on the Pixian doubanjiang, if you want to feel like you’re eating in Sichuan. I can’t stress this enough. You can use the long-aged douban shown in the photo above for deep flavor, or red-oil douban for color, or both, as long as they are from Pixian in Sichuan. But the other, easier-to-find versions of chili bean paste—I’m talking to you, Hong Kong-made Lee Kum Kee—do not taste like the real thing in any way.

These four Sichuan ferments have been flavoring Sichuan jiachang dishes for hundreds of years, and they are what make homestyle homestyle.

Variations on Twice-Cooked Pork

Eating twice-cooked pork in Sichuan over the last two decades, I’ve seen many variations. Chefs seem to take the dish as a jumping-off point for their own creations, using whatever vegetable is fresh and available as an addition. The pork itself is never the whole show and usually comprises only about half of the dish, with the other half being the traditional Chinese green garlic, baby leeks and/or surprise ingredient.

Here are some versions of huiguo rou we have been served in restaurants in Sichuan, with these ingredients in addition to or replacing the leeks:

• fresh green er jing tiao chilies or similar mildly hot chilies
• fresh bamboo shoots
• fried potato cubes
• diamond-shaped flat rice noodles
• foldover sandwich bao on the side to stuff the pork into

Use these ideas as a jumping-off point for your own homestyle cooking!

Further explore jiachang wei by trying Xueci’s Stir-Fried Beef and Celery (Qincai Niurousi, 芹菜牛肉丝）and Sichuan Spicy Braised Chicken With Taro (Yuer Ji, 芋儿鸡)