Recipe: Stewed Pig Intestines with Garlic & Chili Soy Sauce

Ta da! Told you this recipe post was going to be gruesome.

Offal is rather popular in Taiwanese cuisine, seeing as we were once an agricultural society with a decent amount of poor folk trying to scrounge a living. Meat was scarce, and practically every single edible bit found some culinary means by which to be consumed. Internal organs are commonly seen in street food here: hearts, livers, kidneys, and gizzards, braised with soy sauce or deep fried or sauteed with sesame oil or boiled in soup. Certain other less-desired parts by Westerners also range from smoked duck tongue to blanched pig ears and simmered chicken feet. This is what I grew up with, but one thing that was always my favorite was stewed pig intestines.

There are two parts of pig intestines that we cook here: the large intestines and the small intestines. Large intestines are usually braised alongside pork belly, after being cleaned meticulously inside and outside, cooked for hours over a low heat in a casserole of soy sauce (lots of it), star anise, garlic, ginger, scallions, and whatever little tidbit each family might add to their own recipe - we call this 滷大腸 (braised large intestines). Another popular way to do it is actually a Hakka cooking style known as 薑絲大腸 (large intestines with ginger julienne), where the intestines are blanched then sauteed with lots of thinly julienned ginger, thai chili, white vinegar, black vinegar, and more ginger. The result is somewhat of a kick in the face, the sourness of the vinegar is off set by the spiciness of the ginger which is offset by the thick gumminess of the intestines. It's amazing.

What my mother and I cooked today, however, is a lot less exciting than that. Small intestines (粉腸, translates literally into "pink intestines" or "tender intestines") have a finer, sweeter flavor, and have an extra sleeve of fat on the outside that lends to an almost milky, silken flavor. It's absolutely delicate, and I used to spend practically the entire meal gumming on little morsels of this delight at noodle shops instead of actually eating noodles.

I remember the first, and only, time (apart from today, that is) I had this dish at home. I must have been about twelve, and was suffering from a rather miserable bout of the stomach flu. Food refused to stay down, and I was absolutely starving. When my mother caught wind of this situation, she told me that her grandaunt used to cook this one miracle dish for the kids if they were having stomach problems: pig intestines stewed with ginger and spring onions.

Ingredients:
(Stewed intestines)
• 1 pound of small intestines
• 1 slice of old ginger
• 1 large bunch of spring onions

(Dipping sauce)
• 1 small garlic, diced
• 1/2 Thai chili pepper, chopped up
• Soy sauce

First thing you want to do is clean the intestines. Some people recommend turning it inside out and scrubbing it completely, but there's no need for that here. There is some gorgeous fat on the inside of the intestines that would be lost if that step was taken. My mother just scrubbed the intestines under cold water a few times, and then she blanched it very quickly under hot water. She then dropped the intestines in a casserole covered with about an inch of water, and had me start taking care of the spring onions.

The most pungent part of a spring onion is the root end. Since we are going to try to infuse the sweetness of the spring onion in with the intestines, we are going to keep the roots. Chop them off about half an inch in, clean under cold water, and set aside. Clean the spring onions, remembering to leave the entire stem intact save the small tattered bits on top and the old, filmy layer on the bottom.

When the onions are cleaned, grab a piece of old ginger - the older, the spicier, the better - and cut off a fairly thick slice. Toss that into the casserole along with the intestines and the whole sprigs of spring onions. Don't be nervous about bending our little green friends, just grab the bunch by the... stems and bend it so it fits into the casserole.

There, perfect. Oh, and don't forget the roots as well. Make sure you've rinsed all the dirt off of the tiny tendrils and you're good to go.

Turn on the heat to low, throw the lid onto the pot, and let the gorgeous aroma of stewing meat and spring onions permeate your kitchen. This process will take anywhere from an hour and a half to four hours, depending on how tender you want your intestines - my mother does not have teeth as healthy as I do, so I compromised and had the casserole stew an extra hour or two longer than I would have liked it to.

Yes, that is the smallest flame we can muster on our stove without it constantly being blown out by the sneeze of an ant. My mother and I let this run while we ate wonton soup and watched "Bizarre Food" with Andrew Zimmern. The guy seems a lot less enthusiastic about his job than he was a few years ago, and I wonder if the production company is blackmailing him into staying on to eat fried calf's marrow and fermented beans with hairy gourd (Yes, "hairy gourd" - I kid you not). I then returned to my room for an extended Skype session with Elliot during which I took a long and luxurious nap that ended in my whamming my head against my headboard. No, it wasn't like that - keep your minds out of the gutter.

When I woke up - there seems to be a pattern of my waking up to fantastic smelling foods in this house, and that might have something to do with my weight gain these past few months - I could smell the stew from my room. Mind you, my room is on the third floor, whilst the kitchen is on the second, so that's quite a feat there. I sprinted down the stairs and nearly seared my hand off trying to remove the lid (remember kids, use protection), but was rewarded with the sight, and smell, of this.

Notice how the broth has taken on a beautiful milky, yellow hue from the rendered fat of the intestines and the scallions. At this point, the aroma is just... indescribable. It's absolutely rich and warm and seems to coat your sinuses without being stifling. There's truly no way for me to describe it, it's just something you'll have to smell for yourselves.

Once the intestines are tender enough, shut the gas off, leave the lid on, and just let the whole thing cook in the residual heat. Also, resist urge to wolf down everything inside the casserole while this is happening. It's a lot harder than you'd expect.

Once the intestines are cooled enough, remove them and have at it with your handy pair of kitchen scissors - sidebar: I just read that as "skizzoars" at top mental volume. Bite-sized should be good, but the smaller portion you give yourself the less you have to om nom on as you go.

Now for the final very easy and very quick touch. Smash and dice one clove of garlic (do you guys still remember how to do that? I taught you before...) and half a Thai red chili pepper. Throw into a small dipping dish and pour in soy sauce.

ET VOILÀ!!!

Alright, it is now 2:36 in the morning and I seem to have completely lost my shit. Bedtime.