Hong Shao Rou is a family favorite in our house. It's really heavenly on a white man tou. Always try to reserve the oils and fats at the end of cooking because it's delicious when dripped over rice or when soaked up with a piece of man tou. This recipe is heavy on technique but is super easy.

• Choose a pork belly at the grocer with distinct sections between fatty and lean. Should be thirds of each section, fat, mixed, and lean streaks across the pork belly.
• Slice pork belly into cubes or slices, depending on what you want.
• Boil for few minutes with slices of ginger and some cooking wine until grey, dump out scummy water.
• Sear grey meat cubes in oil until lightly crispy (helps texture). Take out meat cubes and put them to rest on a plate.
• Time to make sugar sauce: Get oil and dump either brown sugar or regular sugar into new clean pot. Honestly I put in maybe 1/5 cup of sugar or less, you can go more and it wouldn't make it too sweet. Caramelize until just starting to turn reddish but not burnt.
• Put in crispy cubes of pork belly carefully into sugar and oil mixture quickly, sugar will pop up, put a lid on it.
• Throw in shiitake mushrooms, 2 pieces of star anise, some ginger slices, maybe half cup of soy sauce, cooking wine. Dark soy sauce for color.
• Put on medium low heat for around 45 minutes to 1 hour. Pieces should be tender when taken out.