Coca-Cola isn’t the first ingredient you think to add to your crock pot recipe. It certainly shouldn’t be the last either. Turns out, America’s favorite soft drink packs a ton of flavor into this easy dish.
All you need are the ingredients and an electric crock pot, then you’re ready to go. Beyond slicing the pork belly meat and a few vegetables, the effort that goes into cooking here is fairly minimal. Charlie, a resident at AMLI Dadeland, took the easy route here. Other recipes have you cook the dish in the oven and some call for cooking on the stove in a wok. All variations will have some amount of Coke (obviously), soy sauce, scallions, ginger, and rice wine or sherry. Some renditions even make the dish crispy.
This recipe is a favorite of several Southeast Asian cuisines. It expertly blends savory and salty flavor profiles as so many dishes from this region do. The pork belly meat with its rich fat content only enhances this. The dish is served plain and in it’s own broth. Find the recipe and a brief interview with Charlie, an AMLI resident and was voted the grand-prize winner of our AMLI EATS comfort food recipe contest. As a grand prize winner, Charlie was awarded a dinner party with a private chef who cooked a several-course meal inspired by this recipe.
Other AMLI EATS contest winners received Blue Apron subscriptions and Williams-Sonoma gift cards.
1/2 pounds pork belly fried with vegetable oil
1 can Classic Coca Cola (355ml)
1 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
10 garlic cloves
3 scallions, bottom trimmed, and sliced
5 ginger slices
3 chili peppers, cut into slices
1/4 cup Taiwanese rice wine (soften the port belly)
Toss the ingredients into the crock pot and check every so often until the meat is cooked and the flavor fully-absorbed.
Interview with the cook:
1. How many days of the week do you typically cook?
Monday through Thursday.
2. Who do you usually cook for?
My girlfriend Clare and I.
3. What was the inspiration for your AMLI EATS recipe? Is there a story behind it?
We found out the contest on the elevator board and thought we could cook some Chinese-American fusion style food for AMLI EATS recipe. And we was brainstorming what can be the typical Chinese-American fusion food stood for. We ended up using the cook instead of adding the sugar for our pork belly.
4. What is your favorite cuisine to cook? Why?
Rib eye steak. My girlfriend and I are really obsessed with cooking the perfect steak. It has to be perfect temperature. We really like this video where Gordon Ramsay shows how to cook the perfect steak.
5. Where do you shop for ingredients? Are there any local stores that have great deals, produce, or other items you use to cook?
Grocery Store (Fresh Market, Publix, Whole Food).
6. What’s the best part about cooking at your AMLI apartment?
AMLI has a spacious kitchen area for us to cook and ample drawer and cabinet to storage our cookware and cutlery.
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