Authentic Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Belly (Thit Kho Tau)

Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Belly (Thit kho tau) is classic comfort food of Viet families. Pork belly is slowly braised until it has a beautiful caramel color and becomes so flavorful and tender.

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🥘 What is Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Belly (Thit kho tau)

Caramelized Pork Belly is in the daily rotation of many Vietnamese families. We call it “thit kho tau” (or just “thit kho” for short). Eggs can also be added to the dish, and then we will call the dish “thit kho trung“. The version with eggs is a must-have in the Lunar New Year feast of Southern Vietnamese people.

Basically, pork belly is braised with caramel sauce and fish sauce until the meat is flavorful and tender. You can watch how to cook the dish in the video below.

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🎬 Recipe Video

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There are actually some slight differences between the Northern and Southern versions.

• Northern version: on the salty side, has less sauce, the braising liquid can be plain water, and the pork belly chunks are often smaller than in the South.

• Southern version: on the sweet side, has more sauce, often braised with fresh coconut juice, and the pork belly chunks are bigger.

We grew up with the Northern caramelized pork belly, but our favorite version, which we’re sharing today, combines the best of the Northern and Southern styles with a perfect balance of sweetness and saltiness.

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🛒 Ingredients

Pork belly

Try to find one that has more meat than fat. Some people who don’t like fattiness may use other cuts like pork shoulder. However, thit kho tastes best with pork belly. I don’t like pork fat and always discard the fat when eating but I always use pork belly.

Related: this lemongrass pork belly recipe will show you a different way to cook this cut of pork if you are interested.

Sugar

You will need sugar to make the caramel sauce. In the video, I used golden granulated sugar, which is less refined than white granulated sugar, but there’s no other differences. Vietnamese families always use granulated sugar for this dish. We don’t use brown sugar.

Eggs

Eggs are optional, but I do enjoy the dish more with eggs. You will need to boil the eggs before adding them to the braised pork belly. Viet families may use chicken eggs or duck eggs depending on their preferences.

There is another variation of the dish where the boiled eggs are fried until they have a blistered and golden crust before being cooked with the meat. Though it is really on another level of deliciousness compared to simply using boiled eggs, it’s kinda a pain to fry those boiled eggs with all the blistering and splashing. You may want to give it a try if you aren’t afraid of those cons :).

Other ingredients

You will also need these seasonings and aromatics: garlic, shallots, fish sauce, salt and pepper. Use fresh coconut juice to braise the pork for a pleasant richness and sweetness.

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🍳 How to Cook Thit kho tau

1️⃣ As you can see from the video, the trickiest part of this dish is probably making the caramel sauce. Make sure you watch it closely since it can burn really fast and be really careful when adding water. If you want your caramelized pork belly to look lighter or darker, you can use less or more caramel sauce.

2️⃣ It’s not necessary to marinate the meat for a long time. Just set it aside at room temperature for 10-30 minutes depending on how much free time you have. Then sauté the pork and braise with the caramel sauce until tender.

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❓Can Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Belly be Frozen

Yes, surprisingly, this dish can be frozen quite well but without the eggs. You can store the braised pork along with the sauce in Ziploc freezer bags for 1-2 weeks. Though it takes a little over 1.5 hours to cook, you can easily make a big batch and freeze it.

When you want to eat it, thaw and reheat on the stove, at which point you can add some eggs if you want. We tried it ourselves and felt that the flavors were not impacted.

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🥢 How to Serve Thit Kho Tau

Vietnamese families usually serve thit kho tau (or thit kho trung) with white rice. Another option is to serve it with steamed sticky rice (such as xoi xeo sticky rice with mung bean), also a classic combination in Vietnam.

Thit kho tau can even be eaten with banh mi. Slice the pork belly and eggs into thinner pieces and stuff inside banh mi. Then drizzle some sauce over and sprinkle some black pepper.

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Related Recipes

These caramelized dishes such as this caramelized pork belly and this caramelized fish are the signatures of Vietnamese cuisine, so I hope you will give them a try.

Here are some more traditional Vietnamese pork dishes:

⭐️ I’d love to hear what you think about the dish, so please feel free to leave a comment. New recipes are added every week so let’s connect on Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram for the latest updates. You can find my collection of Vietnamese recipes here.