Bak Kut Teh - Pork in Herba Soup

For the uninitiated, BKT in general sense is Malaysian Chinese pork stewed in medicinal winter herbs (ironicaly, there is no winter in Malaysia, but in the early days, i.e. before global warming, getting stuck indoor during the monsoon season is a pretty cold affair).

To prepare Bak Kut Teh (BKT) is actually a very simple process, the complicated process is actually in the cleaning and preparing the pig gut and intestine, which needs to be cleaned thoroughly.

To prepare a good BKT, you will need,
a. pre-packed herbs, any brands will do, but my personal favourite is in the featured image. If by chance, if there is a good Chinese drug store in your neighbourhood who knows what is BKT, they will be able to prepare the herbal mixture

b. Garlic, it works best with the smoked type (i.e. the ones with the black peels)

c. Pig gut (tripe), which is cleaned throughly, (we will talk about this later), BKT is not BKT without this

d. Other very welcomed ingredients (classical ones are served without, but tasty ones are served with), including, mushroom and fried tofu

e. Coriander (no BKT is garnished without this, again,.... it ain't a BKT untill it is garnished with coriander)

How to cook this dish?, just follow the following steps,

a. Put the herb, garlic, pig gut (add intestines too for the full authenticity), lean pork (or flower pork, if you prefer some extend of fat, which actually adds to the taste)

b. Add water, and cook to boil with medium heat

c. Upon boiling, let it simmer in low-medium heat for 1 hour (at least), this will ensure the flavour of the herbs will be infused into the pork and the other ingredients. Watch the water level, a good benchmark will be, the water level to be exactly the same with the ingredients.

d. Before serving, add some chopped coriander to the stew, and you are all done

e. If by chance you have access to some Chinese fried oil stick (commonly known as Yow Char Kuay - in Cantonese), that will definitely deliver the killer blow!

The end result,



How to prepare the pig gut (or pig tripe), the goal is to remove a layer of film on the tripe which somewhat acts as a skin,
a. Trim out the fat on the gut using a pair of scisors, rinse through water once it is done (somewhat within 5 minutes)
b. Rub the inner surface (turn it inside out) and outer surface with coarse salt and rinse, do this twice. (somewhat done within 5 minutes too)
c. Rub with corn starch then with cooking oil thoroughly and rinse (pretty fast)
d. Scald with ginger, spring onion, and 1 table spoon of white vinegar for 3 minutes
e. And now, with a knife, scrape of the layer of film on the pork tripe (done somewhat within 10 minutes)
f. Cook it in the BKT mix!