The steam of lu rou fan begins where the braising liquid hits the rice
The feeling of lu rou fan arrives sooner when you nudge the pot lid ajar than when you lift the rice cooker lid. The aromas of pork fat, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine and star anise rise as thin steam and slowly change the air in the kitchen. The white rice is still a supporting player. The moment a stream of braising liquid falls and sinks between the grains, that brown bowl begins.
Lu rou fan is a braised-pork-over-rice dish loved in Taiwan. The Taiwan Tourism Administration describes it as a dish in which pork, soy sauce, chopped red shallots, five-spice and more are combined, and the fragrant meat and braising liquid are spooned over white rice. Because the way the pork is cut and how sweet it is varies from shop to shop, it is easier at home to decide first how to keep the liquid on the rice than to look at photos and decide "this is the right one."
This recipe doesn't mince the pork belly finely but evens it into 1.5 cm cubes. The fat melts into the roundness of the braising liquid, and the lean stays as pieces that pull apart with chopsticks. That's the middle ground the cut aims for. Rather than competing with lots of five-spice powder, put in a single star anise and take it out at the end.
Lu rou fan is a bowl that includes not just the flavor of the pork but also how much braising liquid is on the rice. So don't judge the pot only by "is the meat cooked"; finish by looking at how fast it falls from a spoon and how much of the bowl's white rice remains visible.
In northern Taiwan it is often called lu rou fan, and in the south rou zao fan, though names and the shapes of the meat overlap from shop to shop and home to home. In this article, a dish of cubed pork served with its braising liquid over rice is written as lu rou fan. Don't read the southern name as a mistake; read on as a dish whose name and plating vary by region.
Ingredients (serves 4)
For the pork belly, choose a piece with visible layers of fat rather than a lean-only block. If you avoid fat here, then however long you braise, only the liquid gets lighter before the meat pulls apart. If you can find skin-on pork you may keep the skin, but skinless pork, the common kind, is enough to build the dish.
Dark soy sauce is not a soy sauce for adding saltiness but a seasoning for brown color and for rounding the edges of the braising liquid. If you make it with only light soy sauce, it has flavor but the bowl's color is pale, and adding more to darken it tends to make it too salty. It's a seasoning easy to picture using up if you cook Taiwanese braises often.
When you buy, check the ingredient list and size, not just the product name. This recipe uses only 15 ml, so if you plan to make lu rou fan just once, regular soy sauce you already have will do. It suits people who will also use it in bok choy braises or sauces for Hainanese chicken rice, and want to adjust color separately.
Star anise isn't the star of the aroma; it places a sweet shadow behind the pork fat. A single whole one can be taken out partway through the braise, but if you add five-spice powder by the teaspoon, you can't take the aroma back. What to check is that it is whole star anise and the quantity. If you have no plan to make other Chinese-style braises, or dislike licorice-like aromas, it's more satisfying to skip buying it, leave out the five-spice powder too, and increase the ginger a little.
Some soy sauces contain soy and wheat. Shaoxing wine, five-spice powder, pickles and processed meats also differ in ingredients by product, so if you have a food allergy, check each package. You can skip cilantro and eggs, but don't skip checking the labels of the seasonings.
Method: turn the pork fat into braising liquid
Use a deep pot 20–22 cm in diameter. In a pot that is too wide the 450 ml of liquid reduces quickly, and in one that is too narrow the pork piles up and doesn't brown. Boil the eggs in a separate pot ahead of time and peel them before they go into the braise.
Three ways to judge how thick the liquid should be
Lu rou fan fails less because the meat is tough than because the thickness in the pot and the thickness after it's on the rice aren't thought of separately. Even if it's right in the pot, once it goes on white rice the rice absorbs liquid and the outline of the flavor gets one notch lighter. Conversely, if it's too concentrated in the pot, the first bite is strong but saltiness builds up at the bottom of the bowl.
The first is the thin film that stays on the back of a wooden spoon. If a line drawn through it disappears right away, there is too much water; if it stays for about 2 seconds, it is ready to go over rice. The second is the gloss when you lift the pork. Look for liquid sitting on the surface as a thin brown film, rather than shine from oil alone. The third is to taste it with rice. What you feel is "a bit weak" from the liquid alone becomes just right together with white rice.
Turn off the heat, add water 1 tbsp at a time, and warm over low heat for 30 seconds. Thinning with more soy sauce adds salt too, so bring it back with water first. Even if the fat is still separated, it's fine as long as no puddle forms when you spoon a little over white rice.
Regional differences in Taiwan: what it is called where
Order lu rou fan at a Taiwanese eatery and the pork looks different from shop to shop. Some bowls have fine crumbles flowing into the gaps between the grains of rice, and others have cubes with the fat left on that sit on the spoon. The MICHELIN Guide's introduction to Taiwanese food explains that what is called lu rou fan in the north is more often called rou zao fan in the south, and that in the central region some places top the rice with larger blocks of pork belly rather than mince.
The English-language article from Taiwan's National Development Council describes a process of cutting pork small, stir-frying aromatics, and braising slowly with soy sauce and water. Even with similar ingredients, whether you cut coarsely or finely changes how it feels to eat on the same white rice. With cubes, you hunt for the meat with a spoon; with a finely cut rou zao, you scoop it up together with the grains of rice. It is a dish where it's no surprise that every shop tastes different.
When the cut changes, so do how the liquid spreads and how heavy it feels to eat. Cut the pork finer and the liquid blends into the rice faster, with a light mouthfeel closer to mince. Leave cubes and chunks of meat that you break with chopsticks stay in the fat-melted liquid. Both work in Taiwanese homes and eateries, so when you look for recipes in English, the ingredients of "lu rou fan" and "rou zao fan" are similar and easy to get confused about.
The Taiwan Tourism Administration's English introduction touches on the food culture of people who moved to Taiwan after the war, and on the background of braising affordable cuts such as pork neck and ears with soy sauce, red shallots and five-spice aromas in times when meat was precious. It shows that the dish's name doesn't point to a high-end cut but has been tied to the wisdom of using up readily available meat down to the liquid. That said, accounts that pin the origin to one shop or one inventor differ between sources, so here it is treated as an everyday food that has long evolved in Taiwan.
You don't need to chase every regional difference when recreating it at home. With cubes, keep "the presence of the pork" and the sweetness of the fat; with the finer cut closer to southern rou zao fan, lean toward "spreading the liquid evenly over the rice." Deciding first whether you want to leave the meat or have it soak into the rice, rather than which cut of pork to buy, keeps you from getting hung up on the name.
In the kitchen, it's more useful to know that the way the pork is cut changes how the bowl is eaten than to remember the names.
What you can change in a home kitchen
Using pork shoulder in place of pork belly
If you want less fat, replace 300 g of the 700 g pork belly with pork shoulder. The body of the liquid decreases, but the fat doesn't firm up as readily when cold, which suits a lunch. Using only shoulder makes the lean tighten in a 1-hour braise, so go up to half at first. If you feel it lacks fat, it's more natural to leave a little pork belly in the pot than to add 1 tbsp more liquid at the end.
Using sake in place of Shaoxing wine
When replacing the dry aroma of Shaoxing wine with sake, use the same 60 ml and cut the sugar by 5 g. If the cooking sake contains salt, lower the soy sauce to 40 ml to start and taste at the end before adding. Replacing it with mirin alone brings the sweetness to the front, so if you use it, split it as 45 ml sake and 15 ml mirin.
Leaving out the star anise
If you dislike the aroma of star anise, there's no need to force yourself to buy it. Increase the ginger to 15 g and leave out the five-spice powder too, and you get a braise in which pork and soy sauce come to the front. You keep the axis of a sweet-savory braised pork over white rice, so it's an easy branch to serve to a family eating it for the first time. You can also use only half a star anise and keep it so it can be taken out of the pot.
Using mince to move toward rou zao fan
To move toward southern rou zao fan, use 700 g ground pork belly and skip the blanching. Stir-fry for 8 minutes over medium heat, breaking up the meat, and add the aromatics and seasonings after the fat turns clear. The liquid thickens faster than with cubes, so shorten the braise to 35–40 minutes and the final reduction to 2–3 minutes. Mince clings to rice easily, but the satisfaction of eating chunks of meat is weaker.
Changing the sweetness and heat
To reduce the sweetness, use 15 g sugar and taste before finishing the liquid. To add chili, add 1/2 sliced chili partway through the braise, and for more heat, add only a few drops of chili oil after plating. Increasing star anise, five-spice powder and chili all at once hides the aroma of the pork fat, so change one thing at a time.
Storage and building the table
Once the steam has gone, portion the braised pork into shallow containers and refrigerate. At home, plan to finish it within about 2 days in the refrigerator, and for longer, freeze it in single servings. Store the white rice separately from the braised pork and warm it just before eating. If you warm cold rice with the braising liquid already on it, only the surface becomes concentrated before the rice absorbs the moisture.
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare advises portioning leftovers into shallow containers, refrigerating them, and reheating thoroughly to the center before eating. The reheating guide is 75°C or higher at the center for at least 1 minute. Don't think "it's fine if I boil it again" about something left at room temperature a long time; if you're unsure about smell, appearance or storage, don't eat it.
At the table, don't mix in a lot of greens and pickles from the start. Following a bite with a strongly sweet liquid with the moisture of greens and the sourness of pickles makes the same bowl less heavy to the end. Serving them in small dishes as Taiwanese shops do, so each person can change the ratio of meat to rice, also makes it easier to serve to people who want less fat.
Separate the cutting board used for raw meat from the utensils for plating, or wash them after use. Cook the pork through to the center, and when storing the braise, cool it quickly in shallow containers. Aim for reheating to 75°C at the center for at least 1 minute, and don't force yourself to eat food left at room temperature.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make it with ground pork instead of pork belly?
Yes. The liquid clings to rice more easily, which suits you when you want to move toward the form called rou zao fan in the south. Skip the blanching, stir-fry longer to drive off the meat's moisture, and shorten the braise to 35–40 minutes. Braising 60 minutes as in the cube recipe makes the fine meat break down too much in the liquid.
If I don't have dark soy sauce, is regular soy sauce alone okay?
Yes. Use 45 ml regular soy sauce as the base and don't add more because the color is lacking. To get closer to a deep color, add 5 g more sugar for gloss, but it won't match the color and roundness peculiar to lao chou. If saltiness matters more than fidelity, it's easier to judge by making it once with the soy sauce you have.
What if the star anise comes out too strong?
Take the star anise out right away, add 2 tbsp water and simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. If the flavor becomes thin, instead of adding soy sauce a teaspoon at a time, check by tasting the liquid on rice. It is hard to remove the aroma completely, so it's safest to start with half the amount next time.
Will it get tender with pork shoulder?
Shoulder, with less fat, gives a lighter mouthfeel than pork belly. If you keep the 1.5 cm cubes and the low heat at which the liquid doesn't boil hard, you can braise it to the point where it breaks apart with chopsticks. But the fat's body decreases, so don't increase the liquid you spoon over rice all at once, and eat with greens and pickles.
What can I use leftover braised pork for?
You can put a little at a time on warmed tofu, boiled noodles or steamed greens. If you have plenty of liquid left over, adding boiled eggs to soak up the flavor makes a dish for the next day. As with rice, start at 1 tbsp when spooning it over other ingredients and check the saltiness.
Sources
- Taiwan Tourism Administration, Braised Pork Rice (Taiwan Tourism Administration, background and names of the dish; accessed 22 July 2026)
- Taiwan National Development Council, Taiwan Food Special: Minced Pork Rice (Stewed Pork Rice) (introduction to how the pork is cut and braised; accessed 22 July 2026)
- MICHELIN Guide, Know Your Taiwanese Minced Pork Rice (regional differences in Taiwan; accessed 22 July 2026)
- The Woks of Life, Lu Rou Fan (blanching, low-heat braising, finish of the liquid; accessed 22 July 2026)
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan), "Preventing food poisoning at home" (cooling, reheating, hygiene of utensils; accessed 22 July 2026)
Making it while checking the aroma of each ingredient one at a time, the pork in the pot changes from a plain sweet-savory simmer into a braise for white rice. Whether to buy star anise, whether to leave the cubes or move toward mince: once you decide on the scene you want to leave in the bowl, how to make lu rou fan gets harder to get lost in, even in a home kitchen.
