The Definitive Guide to Smoking and Cooking Larou

This is a continuation of Sichuan Wind-Cured Pork Belly (Larou, 腊肉), Part 1. The previous post covers selecting, brining and air-drying this traditional cured meat and Spring Festival staple. Part 2 covers how to cook and eat your larou no matter whether you smoke, boil, steam or stir-fry! 

Earlier this month I delivered a lot of words and a single recipe. All for the promise of juicy, resplendent pork belly, just like my mama’s mama’s mama used to make it. This time around I’m giving you not one, not two, not five, but six recipes, five of which are pretty simple.

The cash prize is Sichuan 腊肉 (làròu), declassified. Doesn’t matter if you over-dried it like we did. Doesn’t matter if you tried to do the neighborly thing and use your grill as a smoker, instead of the wide open ground, and it (kinda) backfired. Cured pork belly forgiveth. A little soak, a little parboil, et voilà! Bob’s your uncle.

When we left off, we had yet to tackle the big question of smoking larou in the suburbs. Many larou-producing regions skip this step altogether, so know that smoking isn’t required for proper-curing, or tasty, larou. But for Sichuan and Hunan, meat-smoking is gospel. My parents and entire villages grew up sloughing off cypress boughs and hanging larou up to cold-smoke right outside. Once you’ve grown up eating smoked larou, it’s both deeply nostalgic and difficult to give up, health claims be damned.

Cold-Smoking Cured Pork Belly

Cold-smoking doesn’t cook the pork belly—exposed flames should be few—but imbues it with a luscious, irreplicable aroma. The color also deepens. Its smokiness without the char, made possible by hanging the meat far above the heat. (This practice is key to that mastered by Indigenous salmon smokehouses along the Northwest Coast, a dwindling but critical lifeway). In Sichuan, cypress was most commonly smoked, but my dad says fruit trees like apple or pear were common too. Add to this selected upcycled scraps like dried mandarin and pomelo peels, peanut shells and sugarcane bark (chewing the sweet, fibrous inside is a spring-summer favorite), and you get an aromatic, smokey bouquet that seeps through the fat to fill every bite with intense flavor. Families like ours start saving those citrus peels weeks before 腊月 (làyuè), the meat-curing month preceding Lunar New Year.

To do it yourself, one traditionally cold-smokes the cured meat for six to eight hours in the open air. Many folks still smoke meat this way (see this great article on Sichuan larou, by our own longtime contributor Jordan Porter), but city-dwellers have long repurposed metal drums for efficiency (and now, discreetness). Depending on the desired smokiness and smoking environment, even two to three hours’ smoke-time might suffice.

Of course, none of the above is feasible in the ‘burbs. So on a tip from Mala Mama’s WeChat cooking group, we smoked our larou for one hour in a covered grill (no dedicated smoker), hoping this East-West fusion would bring us closer to home. Unfortunately, the only place a grill brought us closer to was the heat. The resulting color and smokiness was subtle, woefully reminiscent of old-school smoke sessions. But it took soot-scarring some of the larou to get there. And, when we rehung the meat to air out post-smoke, it dried more than desired.

If you decide to cold-smoke outside and don’t live somewhere you can create an open smokestack at will, we suggest using 1) an actual smoker and/or 2) some kind of heat barrier, capable of shielding the meat from direct heat, but with large holes that allow smoke through. You might also try cold-smoking any time after the shiny, tacky pellicle forms, but before the meat has thoroughly wind-dried. Afterward, hang-dry until satisfied.

For an indoor option, we’ve dug up the Sichuan home cook’s wok-smoking method that Mala Mama recorded in a notebook years ago, on the instruction of an old classmate. Without the need for cypress (or wood chips), you can smoke larou over dry rice, mandarin peels, ground rock sugar and oolong tea leaves. If you don’t own a black iron (carbon steel or cast iron) wok, your options are limited by equipment. Large cast iron Dutch ovens work, but if it’s enameled, you’ll need a layer of foil to protect the surface (if your pot is at all precious, we don’t recommend using at all). With a cast iron skillet, your setup will require multiple steamer levels to elevate the larou above the smoke, similar to this.

And then you can always go rogue with a stovetop smoker (this video’s in English). Everyone has their own method—there is no one correct way to smoke larou. If you understand the limitations of your method and recall what smoking is for (adding color and flavor, basically), you’ll be fine. Just don’t use nonstick, since all these methods involve dry-heating the pan. We highly encourage reading the entire post before proceeding.

Soaked larou produces tender meat without sacrificing flavor to cook time

After smoking, hang-dry another two days before storing or using. If you skip smoking, proceed directly from wind-curing to storing or using. We keep a few weeks’ worth of larou in the refrigerator and transfer a couple strips to the freezer with no special treatment. The rest get vacuum-sealed with the FoodSaver before freezing. This added step ensures the best quality throughout the year, since we make 30-40 pounds of different cured meats at a time. Under ideal conditions, larou can still be stored outside in a garage to minimize further air-drying, but it will continue drying nonetheless.

Whatever happens, it’ll still taste amazing. Don’t fret.

Cooking Steps After Smoking

To begin cooking, wash all larou thoroughly to remove any smoky residue and excess surface oil. We really encourage getting scrubby under the faucet (no soap, just elbow grease). Then, soak each strip in a room-temperature water bath for one to four hours before using. This helps tenderize the meat without prolonging cook time, which only renders more of the succulent fat to oil.

Next, transfer to a wok or wide saucepan and fill with cold water. Once boiling, continue cooking over medium heat for 25-30 minutes. Simmering is insufficient—keep this just short of a rolling boil and watch your sins bubble away. For a visual doneness cue, the fatty layer will turn completely rosy as it cooks. Drain and rinse before slicing to eat immediately.

However, if you wish to steam or stir-fry your larou, parboil the meat for 15 minutes first instead of boiling all the way through.

Why parboil? Chinese cooks frequently parboil meats and veggies to speed along stir-fries or purify stocks. In this case, soaking and parboiling help 1) resuscitate dry larou before stir-frying and 2) soften it enough to slice. Done right, you won’t believe you’re eating meat that was just hanging solid as a brick off your porch for three weeks (oops). Moreover, a proper soak and parboil—particularly if the final dish includes salty doubanjiang—help draw extra saltiness from the meat.

To steam larou, we find it easiest to slice skin-down and steam directly on a serving plate. It doesn’t matter if the slices overlap; steam on high for 10 minutes. Enjoy as a side accompanied by a spread of other dishes. Or steam the larou directly into your usual rice for a savory alternative.

For foolproof rice regardless of cook method, this is a great resource.

You can stir-fry larou directly after soaking, but we especially recommend the parboiling step if you’ll be adding any other salty sauces. To that end, you can boil up a whole strip one day and eat half, steam half, then save any leftovers for stir-frying the next day. Compared to curing, cooking larou is decidedly versatile.

For more flavorful main dishes, douchi, doubanjiang (more on sourcing our Pixian version here) and tianmianjiang are a powerful trio that Taylor effortlessly combines in chao (stir-fried) larou. For inspiration, her once-cooked pork (a play on the more popular twice-cooked pork) was made for this moment.