Pork Sauce Rice, a Taiwanese Snack | Hong Kong Food Blog with Recipes, Cooking Tips mostly of Chinese and Asian styles (2024)

I first encountered this Pork Sauce Rice 肉臊飯 as a snack. It was in a Taiwan night market where I guess there were close to a hundred hawker food stalls. Although it had been ages, I could still recall that my portion of rice was served in a saucer-like bowl with a thin layer of meat sauce poured over it.

That it was a snack, how could I doubt?!

But the taste was amazingly impressive and uniquely Taiwanese. Now I am also in love with my version which I serve in a larger amount as a simple one-dish meal.

I cook this with rice barn oil but if you want yours to come closer to the Taiwanese style, just replace the oil with lard or use diced pork belly than ground pork. Besides, you may also want to serve this with a few pieces of fried tofu or hardboiled eggs as some Taiwanese eateries do.

For a quick meal with vegetable, you may even try multiplying the sauce here and use it for braising a simple dish like this.

Ingredients
200g ground pork
2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-3 cloves shallot, finely sliced
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 tbsp cooking oil (I used rice barn oil)
1 sprig spring onion, finely sliced
2 bowls cooked rice

Sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp rice wine
1 tbsp rock sugar
1 cup water

Marinades for pork
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
1/4 tsp corn flour
1 tsp oil

Method

Marinade pork. Add salt and ground white pepper first before coating it with corn flour and oil; leave for 15 to 30 minutes.

Heat 1 table spoon of oil in a pan over low to medium flame. Sauté garlic, ginger, shallot until fragrant. Add in marinaded ground pork and stir fry.

When the meat turns lightly brown, mix in ingredients for sauce. Even out the pork, cover and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes. You may uncover halfway to flip and turn the meat and to make sure there is enough sauce.
(Update 2013 Sept 5: you may want to read both Sandra and Tim’s feedback below to make variations for this step)

As sauce is reduced to 1 to 2 table spoons, sprinkle in sliced spring onion and mix well. Check taste, dish up the meat sauce including any residual oil (which carries lots of flavors) in the pan and serve hot with rice.

For variations : Consider adding some reconstituted dried mushrooms and/or chilies to cook with the pork.

Comments

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Anya April 12, 2011
I’m really looking forward to trying this! I discovered your blog last week and I’m so happy I did! 🙂
mycookinghut April 12, 2011
What a comfort dish! I love simplicity as such!
Little Inbox April 12, 2011
This is simply delicious. I like this kind of comfort food.
Christine@Christine's Recipes April 12, 2011
This is a classic Taiwanese dish. Love your version, more healthier, but still yummy.
Tastes of Home (Jen) April 12, 2011
Love this! I was just looking for a Taiwanese recipe and here you are 😀
Angie's Recipes April 13, 2011
I had 肉臊面 before…love the taste of ground meat. Gotta try your recipe as my husband loves dishes prepared with ground meat .
tigerfish April 13, 2011
The 肉臊飯 I had in Taiwan was equally in small portions even if it was not in night markets. I enjoy homemade 肉臊 a lot – I have cooked some recently too – not Taiwanese version though. Just a homemade version 😛
pigpigscorner April 16, 2011
My hubs loves this! It’s so simple and so yummy!
Lori April 17, 2011
Man- I would just love to go to a night market. We just dont have anything like that. This look so incredibly good.
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penny aka jeroxie April 17, 2011
oh yum! making me salivate. I want to go to taiwan. never been and heard about it’s very good street food.
Mary Moh April 21, 2011
Mmmm….looks very delicious. I can eat a lot of rice with that pork 😀
claypotclub April 23, 2011
I absolutely love Taiwanese pork sauce! Thanks for posting this recipe. I’ll have to try it out soon.
milkitchen April 23, 2011
This looks like an amazing dish that is easy to prepare but delicious to the tummy. Thanks for sharing.
Winnie Wong April 26, 2011
Yes, I was looking Taiwanese dish, my children love it! Thanks for sharing.
Lori April 28, 2011
I’d have to have more than just a snack! This sounds delicious! I can’t wait to make it. I have everything in so it will be on our table soon.
L Wase May 10, 2011
Wow this was good. I can’t thank you enough
TasteHongKong May 11, 2011
@L Wase,
You’re welcome. I’m glad that you like this.
Bec H May 18, 2011
Thank you very much. You helped me finish the last of my International Studies project!!! Thanks heaps. <3 😀
TasteHongKong May 19, 2011
@Bec H,
Did I? Anyway glad that you could find help here.
And congrats!
Life for Beginners May 19, 2011
This was one of my favourite comfort foods when I was in Taipei earlier this year… there’s something about the soft mince of pork marinated in the black sauce paired with a bowl of pure steamed white rice that is simply heavenly. 🙂
Pikalei May 24, 2011
I added a piece of star anise to the mixture and somehow enjoy it more.
TasteHongKong May 24, 2011
@Pilkalei,
I like your idea of adding star anise too. Thanks for sharing.
WestSide December 9, 2011
Questions for substitutions:
Do you mean rice wine or rice wine vinegar?
Is rock sugar critical or is regular granulated sugar okay?
Is constarch substitutable for corn flour?
TasteHongKong December 10, 2011
@WestSide,
Sure, it is rice wine not rice wine vinegar.
You may use granulated sugar. Yet I’d recommend you try rock sugar if at all possible. To me, its ‘purer’ taste goes well with braised meat and gives the sauce a crystallized look.
Excuse me, it is corn starch.
Annimu March 16, 2012
I can’t wait to try it! Reminds me of the foods I ate growing up in Taiwan.
Pork Sauce Rice « Rice Kernel July 27, 2012
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Sandra September 8, 2012
Hi, i found ur page when i googled for taiwanese minced meat sauce.. Tried ur recipe just now.. So yummmmmmmmyyyyyy!!!! I added in a hard boiled egg, tofu and carrots too.. My little girl who is nrsing a cold, finished up all her rice with the minced meat sauce despite her appetite and taste buds eing affected by the cold.
Thanks for sharing!
TasteHongKong September 10, 2012
@Sandra,
Thanks for writing and advising me how you landed on my post, I appreciate it! Reading you words, I could almost hear you saying, ‘yummy’. Also excited to learn that this suits the appetite for your little girl even she was having a cold (I thought she should like lighter foods).
Hope she had recovered well!
cin December 13, 2012
hai, i landed on your blog while i was looking for yam rice. i am a ‘newbie’ in kitchen, as i had hardly worked in kitchen during my busy working time. but now, i has to cook 3-meals for my husband.. so i am flying here and there looking for easy, simple and of course, delicious chinese/ asian recipes with clear instructions and photos.. will bookmark ur website from now on..
btw, simple and silly questions, i found it hard to find shallots in the markets i visited here in US. will it make any difference if i subs with red onion instead? how are they differ in term of taste/ effect in cooking? thanks a lot.
TasteHongKong December 13, 2012
@cin
Welcome! I think you are on the right direction as they both have an onion flavor. But I find shallots caramelized (brown) faster and release a sharper aroma (slightly garlicky) than onions when being sautéed If you want to use onion as an aromatic here, try finely chop it to help release its flavors, and, add a little more garlic to complement the taste. Chopping onion may make you tear, so you may also want to check out this as how to cut onion without ‘crying’.
Have fun trying and hope you enjoy more and more with your cooking!
Tim September 5, 2013
Howdy,
Would you mind measuring the volume of water from your cup in ML ? I have made this recipe twice, using 240ml as the water, but this seems to wet?
TasteHongKong September 5, 2013
@Tim,
Excuse me, I was not very precise in ml and it doesn’t need to be.
One way to get around the measurement (or differences in our kitchen, such as the power of our heat sources and pots used) is to add two third of the water first. Let the sauce simmer and uncover the pot halfway, flipping and turning the meat as suggested in the recipe. Add remaining water if more than half of the sauce has been reduced/absorbed. Still, check one to two times more to make sure the sauce isn’t too dry.
Thanks for writing and hope this helps. Enjoy!
Tim September 6, 2013
Hi,
Thanks for the reply, that makes sense. Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of recipes advise to add liquids gradually, (like bread or dough). So this was my own fault lol.
Next time, I will add the water gradually.
Thanks.
Jam October 9, 2015
Thank you for posting this. I’ve been looking this recipe. I tried this when I was in Hong Kong 5 years ago. It’s very yummy.