This week we are tapping into Chef T’s background in Vietnamese food and doing a Cringey twist on something her mom makes.
Today we are starting with the pork. In my opinion, shoulders should not be called butts. Telling someone they have a broad butt doesn’t quite have the same effect as telling them that they have broad shoulders.
So you can imagine our confusion when discovering that pig shoulder and pig butt are the same cuts of meat. How does that make any sense? And, to add another layer of complexity, picnic shoulder is a completely different cut!
Of course, this isn’t a picnic, so we don’t need to know about that. This time, we went with the butt.
Most of the other ingredients came to us fairly easy… besides the fried onions for garnish. At the store, there were only 2 options for fried onions.
One container of fried onions was quite large and party sized. Unfortunately, we don’t plan on having a noodle party any time soon, so this one was not an option for us.
The only other, reasonably sized container, said gluten free, but the second ingredient was flour. Apparently that “GF” label is just for all the hipsters who only care about the *thought* of something being gluten free, and don’t actually care if it’s true.
Needless to say, we skipped on the fried onions, but you can add them if you’d like! Chef T likes to toss them in with the green onion oil.
Turns out that the only people sending us smoke signals is our future selves. Yet again, we set off the smoke alarm.
We haven’t received a noise complaint yet, as I believe the neighbors are smoke signal enthusiasts. Regardless, we are going to try and take on the challenge of not setting it off again. Otherwise we might have to change our name to “burning kitchen” and we already spent too much time on our logo to change it now.
Keep your sauce on the food, not the floor,
Your favorite alternative chefs, K & T
Grilled Pork Vermicelli Bowl
Ingredients
Pork/Marinade
- 2 lbs Pork Shoulder/Butt sliced into strips, the long way
- 2 tbsp Honey
- 2 tbsp Fish Sauce
- 4 tbsp Tamari
- 4 Cloves Fresh Garlic minced
- 1 Shallot minced
- 3 tbsps Lemongrass very finely minced
- 2 Green Onions chopped
- 3 tbsps Cilantro finely chopped
- 1 tsp Fresh Cracked Pepper
Other Stuffs
- 1 Carrot julienned
- Rice wine vinegar (enough to cover carrots)
- ½ Lime
- 1 tbsp Honey
- 2 tbsp Fish Sauce
- 1 Sprig green onion chopped
- 1 tsp oil
- Salt
- 77 ounces rice noodles prepared according to package
- 1 Head of Green Lettuce chopped
- 1 Cucumber sliced thin
Instructions
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In a large bowl, add honey, fish sauce, and tamari, mix until the honey is completely dissolved. Add the rest of the marinade ingredients until combined. Add pork to the marinade and mix to ensure that the meat has been thoroughly covered. Refrigerate for 30-45 minutes.
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Julienne carrots and place in a shallow bowl, add rice wine vinegar until carrots are covered. Optionally add a pinch of sugar to the vinegar (Shh...Chef K doesn’t let me use sugar, so ours was a little more tart)
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In a small bowl add 1 tablespoon warm water, fish sauce, lime juice and honey, stir until honey is dissolved. Adjust according to taste. This is your sauce for your vermicelli, you only need a little to drizzle over your noodles.
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In small sauce pan, heat oil at medium heat. Add chopped green onion to pan and stir once or twice, then remove from heat.
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Remove marinated pork from fridge and set on the counter while heating up grill (allows the pork to acclimate to room temperature). Heat Grill to about 350 degrees.
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Cook pork about 6 minutes on each side until fully cooked. (Try not to send too many smoke signals like Chef K and I).
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To assemble, place chopped lettuce in a bowl with noodles on top. Add carrots, cucumbers, and pork on top of the noodles. Garnish the noodles with a little bit of your green onions. Lastly, drizzle with your fish sauce. Enjoy!