Babi Pangang (Chinese-Indo Roast Pork)
Babi pangang
Crisp roast pork with a sweet-sour red sauce and pickled vegetables: the Chinees-Indisch restaurant classic that became a Dutch takeaway staple.
IIIStews & Braises- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 90 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Intermediate
Ask a Dutch person to name a "Chinese" dish and babi pangang will be near the top of the list: crisp roast pork under a glossy, sweet-sour red sauce, scattered with pickled vegetables and crackling. It is one of the defining plates of the Chinees-Indisch restaurant, that particular Netherlands institution where Cantonese and Indonesian cooking met Dutch appetites and produced something new.
A dish of the Chinees-Indisch kitchen
The honest story of babi pangang is a story of migration. The term is Indonesian (babi is pork, panggang means roasted), but the dish as the Dutch know it was shaped in the Chinese-Indonesian restaurants that opened across the Netherlands from the 1960s onward, in the era of gastarbeiders and new arrivals. Chinese cooks, many with roots in Indonesia, adapted Cantonese roast pork to local tastes, and the bright red sweet-sour sauce is very much a Dutch-Chinese creation rather than anything you would find in Java or Guangzhou. Its origins are layered and worth naming honestly: Chinese technique, Indonesian name, Dutch home.
Two stages to good pork
The technique that matters is the double roast. First a gentle spell in a low oven renders the belly tender. Then a blast of fierce heat blisters the skin into crackling. Skipping the second stage leaves you with pale, soft skin, the one flaw a good babi pangang cannot survive. Dry the skin well before it goes in, and don't crowd it.
Babi pangang is comfort food with a passport: Cantonese roast pork that learned to speak Dutch.
The sauce is unapologetically sweet and sour: ketchup, vinegar, sugar and a little sambal, thickened to a shine. Pour it hot over the sliced pork and rice, add quick-pickled carrot for sharpness, and finish with fried onions. It is takeaway food at its best, and worth making properly at home.
“Dry the skin thoroughly and finish under fierce heat. Limp crackling is the one thing a good babi pangang can't forgive.”
Ingredients
Serves 4
The pork
- 800 gpork belly, in one piece, skin on
- 2 tbspketjap manis, sweet soy
- 1 tbspfive-spice powder
- 2garlic cloves, grated
- 1 tspsalt
The sweet-sour sauce (saus)
- 200 mlwater
- 3 tbsptomato ketchup
- 2 tbsprice vinegar
- 2 tbspsugar
- 1 tbspketjap manis
- 1 tspsambal oelek
- 1 tbspcornflour, slaked in water
To serve
- 1carrot, julienned, quick-pickled
- 0.25cucumber, sliced
- to servefried onions
- to servekroepoek and steamed rice
Method
- 1
Marinate the belly
Rub the pork all over with the ketjap manis, five-spice, garlic and salt. Leave to marinate at least an hour, ideally overnight, so the spice works into the meat. Pat the skin dry before roasting for the best crackling.
- 2
Slow-roast, then crisp
Roast at 160°C for about an hour until tender, then raise the heat to 220°C (or flash under the grill) to blister and crisp the skin. The two-stage roast gives soft meat under a crackling top.
- 3
Make the red sauce
Simmer the water, ketchup, vinegar, sugar, ketjap and sambal together until it tastes brightly sweet-sour. Whisk in the slaked cornflour and cook a minute more until it turns glossy and lightly thickened.
- 4
Slice and dress
Rest the pork, then slice it thick. Lay it over rice, spoon the warm red sauce generously across, and pile on the quick-pickled carrot and cucumber.
- 5
Finish and serve
Scatter with crisp fried onions and lean a few kroepoek against the plate. Serve at once, while the skin is still crackling and the sauce is hot.
Alongside the braise
Slow pots want something to catch the sauce and something sweet against it.
- Boiled potatoes, or a mound of plain rice for zuurvlees
- Rode kool met appel, red cabbage stewed with apple
- Appelmoes, apple sauce, the eternal Dutch side
- Zoervleisj on fries, Limburg-style, over frites
Questions from the kitchen
Is babi pangang Indonesian or Chinese?+
It is Chinese-Indonesian, a dish of the Chinees-Indisch restaurants that blended Cantonese roast-pork technique with Indonesian and Dutch tastes. The sweet red sauce is very much a Netherlands-Chinese invention.
Why is it a "Dutch" dish?+
From the 1960s, Chinees-Indisch (Chinese-Indonesian) restaurants spread across the Netherlands, and babi pangang became one of their most-ordered dishes, a fixture of Dutch takeaway culture rather than of Indonesia itself.
Can I use a different cut?+
Pork belly gives the best mix of crisp skin and soft meat, but shoulder works for a leaner result. Without skin, aim for a good caramelised crust under high heat instead of crackling.
Paint the rest of the meal
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