I have a friend who’s seriously next level when it comes to cooking. She has historically been one of the best cooks I’ve ever known. She was also probably one of the reasons that I didn’t starve to death during my college sophomore year, based on how much she fed me that year. With that background of legitimacy now established and kept in mind, I once asked her, “Hey, from all of the stuff that you’ve made, is there a dish that you liked and would recommend to me to make?”

“Fen zheng rou” was her answer.

“…Sorry, what did you say?” said my white-washed-clearly-not-Chinese-enough-to-know self. I had to ask her to text the dish’s name to me so I could google it later. A few months later, I was able to make good on that recommendation she gave me and make it for dinner for family this holiday break. I used this recipe from the blog, ChinaSichuanFood.

Making the Dish

“Fen zheng rou” translates to “powdered steam meat.” A cursory search into this dish informs me that it is part of a family of homestyle steamed meat dishes in rice flour called “Fen zheng” dishes. This seems to be a pretty well-known dish in China, particularly in provinces like Sichuan or Hubei.

Though it is a Sichuan dish, to accommodate my dad who does not like the numbing mala spice, I made the non-spicy version. So, sorry to disappoint, no spices to be had here.

The first step was to slice a slab of pork belly crosswise into ~1/2″ pieces. I then marinated the slices in egg, soy sauce, more cooking wine than I anticipated, sesame oil, oyster sauce, sugar, and a bit of salt then left it to sit while I prepared the rice powder.

Something I didn’t know before was that another name for “sticky rice” is “sweet rice”. So, when I was trying to search for sticky rice at the grocery store, I was getting a bit frustrated over how I couldn’t seem to find it before a google search told me to go look for sweet rice. Anyway, I combined some sticky rice with jasmine rice, gave it a quick wash, and tossed in some fennel, a small piece of cinnamon, a bay leaf, and 1 star anise. I initially put the pan on medium heat to toast the rice but realized that a slow heat ensured more even toasting and lowered the heat down to low, stirring frequently until the water dried off and the rice grains were nicely toasted to a lightly brown color.

I then transferred the mixture to a food processor, picking out 3/4ths of the star anise, the bay leaf, and the cinnamon. It took me awhile to pulse everything together. I realize that rice is pretty hard to pulse and that a mortar and pestle may have been a better option in this case. But I was committed. After a couple minutes of long pulses, it looked less like a powder and more like a very coarse meal with broken grains of rice but it was good enough for me.

I then transferred my rice powder/sand/meal to my bowl of marinating meat and mixed it thoroughly. My mom helped me cube some sweet potatoes and we set up the steamer. We split the amount of food we had between two steaming dishes. We placed the cubes of sweet potatoes on the bottom of the dish and put the marinated/coated pork belly on top.

Then, we let it steam for the next 50 minutes.

Then end result wasn’t too bad at all! An initial taste test told me that I needed more salt and the cooking wine taste was a little strong for my taste so I added some more salt, soy sauce, and a dash more of sesame oil. I enjoyed the mellow taste of this and the diversity in texture. The rice coating was chewy (which I liked) and the pork belly meat was tender with some chewier parts of cartilage. Even the sweet potato bits complemented the meal pretty nicely too. It wasn’t overwhelming to eat and didn’t leave me tired at the end of a meal, which is something I’m starting to appreciate more with my meals nowadays My dad was also able to enjoy a mala-free meal. However, I did notice my mom eating it with some Thai chilies though, haha. Maybe the next time I make this, I’ll indulge my mom with the proper Sichuan version with all the peppercorns and doubanjiang.

Overall, I like this dish and would make it again. I don’t know if it was worth the effort with making the toasted rice powder but I have been informed that premade rice powders exist so that’ll probably be my option for this moving forward.

Solid recommendation from a solid friend.