Khong bah png facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Khong bah png |
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Pork belly rice served with fermented bamboo shoots
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| Traditional Chinese | 炕肉飯 | ||||||||||||||
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Khong bah png (pronounced khong bah pnung), also known as Braised Pork Rice, is a super yummy dish from Taiwan and Fujian, China. It's a type of gaifan dish, which means it's a meal served over rice. Imagine tender, flavorful pork belly served right on top of a bed of warm rice!
This delicious dish is usually made with pork belly. The pork is cooked in a special way called lu. This means it's boiled and then soaked in a tasty sauce made with soy sauce and sugar. Often, you'll find Chinese pickles served with it. They add a nice tangy crunch!
Braised pork rice likely started in Quanzhou, China. It came to Taiwan a long time ago, when people moved there during the Qing Dynasty. Over time, Khong bah png became a really important part of Taiwanese xiaochi culture. Xiaochi means "small eats" or snacks, but they can be full meals too! You can find this dish at many food stalls or bento shops. Similar dishes are also popular in Hakka cuisine, Singapore, and Malaysia. It's definitely one of Taiwan's most famous foods!
What's in a Name?
The name Khong bah png can be written in a few ways in Chinese. Even though the characters might look different, they all mean the same yummy dish. In Mandarin Chinese, people often say kòngròufàn, which sounds a lot like the Taiwanese Hokkien pronunciation, khòng.
It can get a little confusing with names in Taiwan! In southern Taiwan, people call this dish 滷肉飯 (lǔròufàn). But if you go to northern or central Taiwan, 滷肉飯 actually means a different dish called minced pork rice. To make things even more interesting, in the south, they call minced pork rice 肉燥飯! So, depending on where you are, the name can change!
A Special Dish in Changhua
In the city of Changhua in Taiwan, Khong bah png is one of the three most famous local dishes. The other two are ba-wan (a giant meatball) and cat-mouse noodles.
What makes Changhua's Khong bah png special? They often use pork from the rear leg instead of pork belly. Sometimes, the fat and lean parts of this meat can separate when it's cooked. So, to keep it all together, vendors often use a small toothpick! It's a clever trick. People in Changhua love this dish so much, they eat it all day long, even for breakfast or as a late-night snack!
Changhua has even celebrated this amazing dish! In 2011, they held a big festival for Khong bah png. Many local restaurants joined in, and even the President of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, visited the event! The next year, in 2012, Changhua even set a Guinness World Record for making the largest braised pork rice dish ever! It weighed a massive 647 kilograms (that's over 1,400 pounds)!
