Thousand-Layer Steamed Pork

Thousand-layer steamed pork is a traditional dish of Jingzhou (old Jiangling) in Hubei, where it counts among the city's noted banquet dishes and the 'three great bowls' of the Jiangling table. It is also called 梳子肉 (comb pork) for the way the thin slices stand in a row, and 千张扣肉 for the layered, bowl-inverted form. By tradition the dish is traced to the Tang chancellor 段文昌, a Jiangling native who is said to have refined an older 梳子肉 while home visiting kin and carried it back to Chang'an — but this is carried as legend (相传) rather than firm record. Local accounts add that the dish was later reworked under the Qing, when cooks cut the pork far thinner, into dozens of slices rather than a few thick blocks, and changed the bedding from preserved greens to fermented black beans with fermented bean-curd liquor and Sichuan pepper; the exact reign-year and the cooks named in those accounts vary between sources and the precise history is not settled. What is consistent across sources is the dish's home in Jingzhou/Jiangling and its 豆豉-and-腐乳 seasoning, which distinguishes it from the preserved-mustard 梅菜扣肉 of other regions.

The fan of slices comes off the plate impossibly soft — each thin sheet of belly is tender enough to fall apart against the tongue, the fat gone translucent and silky, the lean meat yielding without a fibrous catch. The skin on top is gelatinous and slightly sticky, sweetened by the sugar color, and underneath rises the dark, salty-funky depth of the fermented black beans and the winey edge of the bean-curd liquor, with a faint numbing warmth from the Sichuan pepper. The seasoning soaked up through the steam is savory-sweet, never one-note salty. Done well the slices hold their layered fan when inverted yet give way the instant you bite; done badly the pork is understeamed and chewy, the fat still firm, or the bottom seasoning is harsh and raw because the long steam was cut short.

The dish lives or dies on the long, gentle steam. Pork belly is first boiled to firm it for slicing, then deep-fried skin-down so the skin blisters and the surface sets — the brief frying also drives moisture from the rind and primes it to turn gelatinous later. A coat of sugar color (caramelized sugar) gives the skin its mahogany tone and a thread of sweetness. The slab is then cut paper-thin: thin slices have far more surface for the steam-borne seasoning to penetrate and far less distance for connective tissue to soften through. Packed skin-down over 豆豉 and 糟腐乳汁, the bowl is steamed for hours, during which sustained moist heat at around 100°C hydrolyzes the collagen in the skin and fat into gelatin, so the belly turns silky and the slices slump into one tender mass. The fermented black beans and bean-curd liquor contribute glutamates and the aromatic by-products of fermentation, salting and deepening the meat from below; inverting the bowl at the end lets the rendered, seasoned juices run back down through the layers.