Toasted rice pork

May 25, 2026 4:30 PM

Back in March, I had attended a wedding, and one of the appetizers were these cute little veggie spring rolls. I thought they were delicious, and it made me want to make some spring rolls of my own.

I remember telling my aunt I made some chen nem生ណែម - fresh spring roll, and she said something like

leu jiah chen nem汝食生ណែម - you eat fresh spring roll?! in the winter?!

And I had to tell her, it's spring! It literally became spring that week!

Well, maybe it was technically spring, but it was actually still so cold for the next month and a half, so I guess Soy Go細姑 - small aunt was right to call me out on that.

When my family makes spring rolls, we typically add both pork and shrimp, but I was a bit tired right after that wedding trip, and I didn't want to make things too gang kou艱苦 - difficult for myself, so I opted to just include shrimp. (Yes, shrimp is the easier of the two!)

But after I finished all my shrimp, I still had more spring roll wrappers left, and I didn't want to make even more shrimp spring rolls, so I decided that it was time to cook some pork.

I often will go the easy route and just boil and slice some pork belly, but Soy Go has a special pork recipe that involves toasted rice. Remember when I had spring rolls every day for pre-dinner snack? Well, I did learn how to make the pork! When Soy Go first explained it to me, she made it sound like it was sooo easy.

It's not. Spring rolls themselves are already a lot of work, and this pork makes it a whole day affair for me. And I was actually feeling kind of sick recently and I did not want to make cooking more of a hassle. Buuut I guess my desire to eat this pork took over, and because of that, now YOU can learn how to make this pork too!

Anyway, I grabbed about a 3 lb chunk of pork butt from Aldi and I got started. In order to get more flavor into the pork, I cut it up into large chunks and then I salted the chunks for at least a few hours before I cooked them. But I'm still not sure if this extra step makes that much of a difference.

Next I needed to make the toasted rice. I would say that if you have sticky/sweet rice, definitely use it! But most of the time, I only have a big bag of Jasmine rice so that's what I used. For this amount of pork, I scooped out about 1/4 of a rice cooker cup, washed that, and then cha炒 - stir fry on a dry pan on medium heat.

Then I toasted it until it was chiah chiah sek赤赤色 - golden brown! Once that cooled a little, I threw it into my Nutribullet and blitzed it up into little pieces.

And then it was time to cook the pork. I boiled 2.5 quarts of water and added a healthy pinch of salt and sugar. I ended up using 1 tbsp of salt and 1.5 tbsp of sugar, but honestly I think it could have used more of both. I plopped in the pieces of pork and let it boil for 5 minutes before turning the heat down to medium low, and then I let it simmer for 30-45 minutes, occasionally skimming out the impurities that float to the top.

To see if the pork is done cooking, you can take a chopstick and poke at it and see if blood comes out. That's what Soy Go told me, but I just kind of cut into it to see if it looks cooked. If it's still a bit tough, you can also cook it for longer. Once it was at my desired tenderness, I sliced it up into bite sized pieces.

And finally, I seasoned it with the toasted rice, salt, sugar, and goi jeng雞精 - chicken bouillon to taste.

I like to put these in my spring rolls! The toasted rice bits make it so fun to eat. My aunt also told me to save the water that the pork cooked in, to bu beung煲飯 - cook rice in it or something. I decided to make some soup with it. I made this Napa cabbage and tofu soup recipe, but I used my pork broth instead of chicken broth. It was very good!