Lu Rou Fan.
Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice
滷肉飯 · say it: loo row fahn
Take fatty pork belly, cut it by hand into pieces about the size of a fingernail, and let it simmer in soy sauce, rice wine and a handful of crisp fried shallots until the fat has gone soft and the sauce clings to a spoon. That is lu rou fan, and it is served in a small bowl over rice, usually with a soy-braised egg and a few slices of pickled cucumber on the side. The flavour is savoury first, gently sweet second, with five-spice and white pepper somewhere behind — rich enough that a modest scoop is the correct portion. Taiwanese people eat it at breakfast, at midnight, and at every meal in between.
- Gate
- TaiwanTaipei
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 1 hr 35 min
- Total time
- 2 hr
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Easy
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 690 kcal
- Protein 30 g
- Carbs 62 g
- Fat 36 g
- Fiber 2 g
- Sugar 9 g
- Sodium 1500 mg
Why this recipe works.
- Hand-diced belly rather than mince, so the finished sauce is made of distinct soft cubes instead of grainy paste.
- Renders the pork first and fries the shallots in its own fat, which is where the deep, roasted aroma comes from.
- A caramel step with rock sugar gives real mahogany colour without leaning on a bottle of dark soy.
- Braises the eggs in the same pot, so the whole meal comes out of one pan in ninety unattended minutes.
Ingredients.
18 itemsFor the braise
For the eggs
To serve
Equipment
- Heavy saucepan or small Dutch oven with a lid
- Sharp chef's knife
- Rice cooker or saucepan for the rice
Instructions.
Dice the pork
Firm the pork belly in the freezer for 30 minutes, then slice it into 1 cm strips and cut those across into rough 1 cm cubes. Do not aim for perfection — uneven pieces melt into the sauce at different rates, which is exactly the texture you want.
Render and brown
Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and add 700 g of diced pork. Cook for 8–10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the fat has run out and the lean edges are browned and catching on the base of the pan. Spoon off all but about 2 tablespoons of the rendered fat.
Tip Wait for actual browning. If the pork is only grey and steaming, the finished braise will taste flat no matter how long it cooks.
Caramelise the sugar
Push the pork to one side, add the sugar to the hot fat and let it melt without stirring until it turns the colour of weak tea and smells faintly of toffee — 60 to 90 seconds. Immediately stir it through the pork so every cube is coated before it can darken further.
Tip Caramel goes from amber to acrid in seconds. If it smells sharp or smoky, start this step again — bitter caramel cannot be rescued.
Add aromatics and liquid
Stir in the garlic, ginger and half the fried shallots and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant. Pour in the rice wine, let it bubble away for a minute, then add both soy sauces, the water, star anise, five-spice, white pepper and the shiitake if using.
Braise gently
Bring to a boil, then drop the heat until the surface barely trembles. Cover with the lid ajar and simmer for 75–90 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes, until the pork cubes are completely soft and the sauce has reduced by about half and coats the back of a spoon.
Braise the eggs
Slip the peeled boiled eggs into the pot for the last 25 minutes, rolling them occasionally so they colour evenly. Lift them out once they are an even chestnut brown all over, with no pale patches left where they rested against the pan.
Finish the sauce
Stir in the remaining fried shallots and the shallot oil, then taste. The sauce should be intensely savoury with a clear sweet edge and just enough salt to season plain rice. Loosen with a splash of water if it has gone past syrupy, or simmer uncovered a few minutes more if it is thin.
Serve in small bowls
Fill each bowl two-thirds with hot rice and spoon over a generous ladle of pork and sauce — about a quarter of the pan per person. Halve a braised egg onto each bowl, add pickled cucumber and a few coriander leaves, and eat while the rice is still steaming.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Freeze the pork belly for 30 minutes before cutting. Firm fat dices cleanly into neat cubes; room-temperature belly smears under the knife.
- Aim for roughly half fat and half lean. Too lean and the sauce never gets silky; all fat and it is unpleasant to eat by the spoonful.
- Buy fried shallots in a tub if you can — Taiwanese and Thai brands are excellent — but fry your own once to understand why the oil matters as much as the crisp bits.
- Do not let the braise boil. A bare simmer keeps the cubes intact; a hard bubble breaks the fat out into a greasy slick on top.
- Season the sauce at the very end, after it has reduced. Soy sauce concentrates dramatically and a bowl that tasted right at minute ten will be too salty at minute ninety.
- Serve it over short-grain Taiwanese or Japanese rice, cooked slightly on the firm side, so the grains hold up under the sauce instead of turning to porridge.
Substitutions.
- Pork belly → Pork shoulder plus 100 g of diced back fat or lardons
- Shoulder alone comes out dry and stringy. You need visible fat in the dice — the softness of the finished sauce comes entirely from rendered pork fat.
- Fried shallots → Crispy fried onions, or a large shallot sliced thin and fried in oil until golden
- Fried onion is sweeter and coarser but works. Add it earlier than you would fried shallots so it has time to soften into the sauce.
- Shaoxing or Taiwanese rice wine → Dry sherry, or an extra 100 ml of water with 1 tsp rice vinegar
- Skipping the wine entirely leaves the braise flat and slightly porky; something with a little acidity and aroma is worth using.
- Rock sugar → Brown sugar or granulated sugar
- Rock sugar gives a cleaner sweetness and a glossier finish, but ordinary sugar caramelises the same way. Use slightly less if it is brown sugar.
Variations.
- Kong rou fan
- The chunky cousin: pork belly cut into thick slabs, red-braised in the same liquid until wobbling, and laid over rice in one or two pieces instead of spooned.
- With dried shiitake
- Rehydrated shiitake diced small and braised alongside the pork, with the soaking water added to the pot — deeper and earthier, and common in home versions.
- Meat-free lu fan
- Taiwan's vegetarian Buddhist restaurants braise diced pressed tofu and shiitake stems in the same soy, five-spice and shallot liquid, finished with sesame oil instead of pork fat.
Storage & reheating.
Lu rou fan keeps 5 days refrigerated and is unquestionably better on day two, once the fat has set and been stirred back in. It freezes for 3 months; portion it flat in bags so it thaws quickly. Reheat in a pan over low heat with a splash of water to loosen the sauce, and cook fresh rice — reheated rice under this sauce goes gluey. Braised eggs should be eaten within 3 days and stored submerged in the sauce so they keep colouring.
Serve with
A soy-braised egg, blanched greens with garlic and shallot oil, pickled cucumber or daikon, and a small bowl of clear soup alongside.
The story behind Lu Rou Fan.
Nobody can point to an inventor, and Taiwanese food writers generally do not try. Lu rou fan is what happens when a frugal kitchen has more pork fat than pork, more rice than anything, and a lu pot — a standing braise of soy sauce, sugar, rice wine and spices that is topped up and reused rather than made fresh. Cheap cuts and trim go into it, come out glossy and deeply seasoned, and get stretched over a bowl of rice that costs almost nothing. The dish belongs to the same working-class logic as the fried shallots stirred into it: shallots are fried in lard, the crisp bits and the perfumed oil are both kept, and nothing is wasted.
There is a naming argument that catches out visitors. In the north, lu rou fan means finely diced or minced pork belly over rice, and a bowl of chunked, red-braised pork belly is called kong rou fan. Travel south to Tainan or Kaohsiung and lu rou fan often refers to the chunky version, while the minced one is sold as rou zao fan. Order confidently in the wrong city and you will get a different dish than the one in your head. Both camps agree on one thing: the pork should be cut by hand, not ground, because grinding crushes the fat and the finished sauce turns muddy instead of separating into distinct soft cubes.
It is also the country's most reliable measuring stick. Convenience stores sell it, night market stalls that sell nothing else run for decades on it, and the bian dang — the Taiwanese lunchbox — is built around a scoop of it. When Taiwanese people abroad describe missing home food, this bowl comes up more often than anything else on the island, which is a strange fate for a dish made from the parts of the pig nobody wanted.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between lu rou fan and rou zao fan?
They are often the same dish under different regional names. In northern Taiwan, lu rou fan means finely diced braised pork belly over rice; in the south, that dish is usually called rou zao fan and lu rou fan refers to larger chunks of red-braised belly. Ordering by description rather than by name avoids the confusion entirely.
Can I use ground pork instead of dicing it myself?
You can, and the result is edible, but it is a noticeably different dish. Grinding crushes the fat so it renders out into a greasy layer rather than staying suspended as soft cubes, and the sauce turns grainy. If you must use mince, choose a coarse grind with high fat content and shorten the braise to about 45 minutes.
Why is my braise greasy on top?
Either the pot boiled instead of simmering, which breaks the fat out of the meat too fast, or the belly was unusually fatty. Both are easy to fix: chill the finished braise, lift off the solid fat cap, keep a spoonful or two of it to stir back in for flavour, and discard the rest.
Do I have to use five-spice?
No, and plenty of Taiwanese cooks use only a star anise or two rather than the ground blend. Five-spice is assertive — a quarter teaspoon too much and the braise tastes of liquorice and cinnamon instead of pork. Start small, taste at the end, and add more only if the sauce feels one-dimensional.
How do I get the eggs to take on colour evenly?
Peel them, prick nothing, and let them sit in the braising liquid off the heat for at least an hour or overnight in the fridge, turning them once or twice. Eggs floating with one side above the sauce end up two-toned, so use a container narrow enough to keep them submerged.
What rice should I serve with it?
Short-grain japonica rice, the same type used in Taiwan and Japan, cooked slightly firm. Its stickiness holds the sauce without dissolving. Long-grain jasmine rice works in a pinch but the separate grains let the sauce run to the bottom of the bowl.
You might also like.
All recipes →
Keep exploring Taiwan.
Taiwan has 9 more dishes in the atlas — Danzai Mian and Feng Li Su, and 7 more.
Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 21, 2026 · updated August 21, 2026